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TALES FROM GORKY 





























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» « ' 


Tales from Gorky 


TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN 

WITH 

A Biographical Notice of the Author 

by 

R. Nisbet Bain 


SANS PEUR ET 
SANS REPROCHE 


THirD EDITION 


NEW YORK 

FUNK AND WAGNALL’S COMPANY, 30, Lafayette Place 
[All Rights Reserved ] 

1902 





Translated from the Russian by 
R. Nisbet Bain . 


/7s77?47 



fc-f'Pt- ficFMp&T 


Copyright , 1902 

AVw K'W’ : /'>/«£ and WagnalPs Company , 30, Lafayette Place 
London : Jarrold Sons 


CONTENTS 


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE 

I. IN THE STEPPE - 

II. TWENTY-SIX OF US AND 

III. ONE AUTUMN NIGHT 

IV. A ROLLING STONE 

V. THE GREEN KITTEN 

VI. COMRADES* 

VII. HER LOVER 

VIII. CHELKASH 

IX. CHUMS 


PAGE 

7 

19 

ONE OTHER - - 42 

67 

- - 82 

146 

- 160 ^ 

186 

. 195 

*58 





BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


We should not give very much for the chances of a 
poor friendless lad of feeble constitution, vagrant 
disposition, and an overpowering taste for excite- 
ment, who should be turned adrift to shift for himself 
at an age when most young lads are still safe at 
school. The fortunes of such a one, if adequately 
recorded, might, and no doubt would, be infinitely 
more engrossing, if less edifying, than the humdrum 
chronicle of the steady clerk or patient mechanic ; 
but a prison, or workhouse infirmary, might safely be 
predicted as the ultimate and inevitable receptacle of 
such a piece of human flotsam. 

But now let us suppose — a handy supposition, I 
admit — that our imaginary little nomad were endowed 
with that illuminating spark we call genius ; let us 
suppose, too, that in late boyhood, or early manhood, 
he learnt to love letters, and deliberately set about 
describing his extraordinary experiences, as well as 
the strange bedfellows whom misery from time to 
time threw in his way — what piquant, what grotesque 
pen-and-ink sketches we might expect from such an 
inspired ragamuffin! It would be Oliver Twist or 


8 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


Humphrey Clinker telling his own tale without the 
softening intervention of Mr. Charles Dickens or Mr. 
Tobias Smollett. 

Let us further suppose not England but Russia to 
be the theatre of our hero’s miseries and adventures, 
and the interest of the story will at once be infinitely 
enhanced. The odds would now be a thousand to 
one against our hero’s attaining to manhood at all, 
and a hundred thousand to one against his ever 
attaining to authorship. His risks would be out of 
all proportion to his chances. From first to last 
starvation would constantly dog his footsteps, and 
Siberian exile would be the least terrible of a score of 
those administrative measures by means of which the 
servants of the Tsar wage unintermittent warfare 
against the vagrant population of their master’s im- 
mense Empire. The career, then, of a professional 
tramp in Russia must needs be of tragic intensity, and 
it was my good fortune, some eighteen months ago, 
in the pages of “ The Pilot? to be the first to call the 
attention of English readers to the strange history 
of a Russian tramp of genius, who is, moreover, his 
own chronicler. Maksim Gorky — Maximus the Bitter 
— is the pseudonym deliberately chosen, at the outset 
of his career, by the young Muscovite author who is 
at the present moment (and I do not even except 
the revered name of Tolstoi) by far the most popular 
story-teller in the Russian Empire. The following 
brief biographical sketch of this remarkable man is 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


9 


the best introduction I can affix to this selection 
from Gorky’s unique " Razskazui,” in all of which the 
author has, more or less, embodied his grim experi- 
ences of life beneath the transparent veil of fiction. 

Aleksyei Maksimovich Pyeshkov was born on 
March 14th, 1869, at Nijni-Novgorod. His mother 
Barbara was the daughter of a house painter and 
decorator, Vasily Kacherin ; his father was Maksim 
Savvatiev Pyeshkov, an upholsterer of Perm. Alek- 
syei’s parents seem to have been worthy, colourless 
people, and fairly well educated for their station ; 
but they dwindle into insignificance before their 
respective fathers. Young Pyeshkov’s two grand- 
fathers were undeniably men of character, self-made 
men of brutal energy, who terrorized their respective 
families, and were as hard and cold as the money 
they worshipped. So severe, indeed, was the regimen 
of Aleksyei’s paternal grandfather, that his own son 
ran away from him five times in the course of seven 
years. On the fifth occasion he did not return, but 
walked all the way (he was only seventeen) from 
Tobolsk in Siberia, where the family then lived, to 
Nijni-Novgorod, where he settled down as an 
apprentice to a clothier. Five years later we find 
him occupying a responsible position in the office 
of a steamship company at Astrakhan. Gorky’s 
maternal grandfather may well have been the proto- 
type of Ignat Gordyeev, the most impressive character 
in Gorky’s romance, “ Thoma Gordyeev.” Beginning 


10 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


life as a raftsman on the Volga, in the course of a 
short time he became a man of substance, started 
a dyeing factory at his native place, Nijni- 
Novgorod, was elected Starshina , or Chief of the 
Traders’ Guild there, and was generally looked up 
to by everyone but his wretched daughter, whom he 
made more wretched still when she threw herself 
away — or so he accounted it — on such a poor non- 
descript as Maksim Pyeshkov. 

The earlier years of Aleksyei Pyeshkov were as 
uneventful as are the years of most children. In 
1873, however, when he was only four years old, he 
met with his first misfortune : his rolling stone of a 
father died of cholera at Astrakhan. His mother 
re-married shortly afterwards, and transferred him 
to the care of his grandfather, who seems to have 
been kind to the little lad — cruel fathers are very 
often indulgent grandfathers — and taught him to read 
with the aid of the Psalter and other liturgical books, 
by way of preparing him for school, whither he was 
presently sent. But his regular schooling lasted no 
longer than five months, for about this time his 
mother died of consumption, and almost simul- 
taneously his last natural prop gave way, his grand- 
father suddenly ruining himself utterly by over- 
speculation. Little Aleksyei, therefore, was obliged 
to exchange his schoolroom for the shop of a cobbler 
to whom he was apprenticed ; but after serving his 
master for two months, he burnt one hand so severely 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


n 


with boiling pitch that he was pronounced useless to 
the trade, and sent about his business. 

On recovering from the effects of this accident he 
was apprenticed by his kinsfolk to a draughtsman, 
who treated him so harshly that he ran away, 
becoming first an assistant to an ikon-maker, and 
then a turnspit on a steamer on the Volga. Here 
he met with an unexpected piece of good luck. 
His new master, the cook on board the steamer, 
Smurny by name, happened to be a lettered man 
of superior ability, and he proved to be one of the 
best friends young Pyeshkov ever had. But for him, 
indeed, modern Russian Literature in all probability 
would now have been minus of one of its chief orna- 
ments. Smurny awakened within the lad a love of 
literature, and placed at his disposal his own little 
library, a miscellaneous collection enough, in which 
fantastic lives of the Greek Orthodox Saints and 
interminable treatises on Freemasonry lay cheek 
by jowl ; it was, however, an inestimable boon to 
Aleksyei, and it included, at any rate, the works 
of one indisputable European classic — Gogol — 
besides some of the novels of Alexandre Dumas. 
Pyeshkov himself, in his fragmentary autobiography, 
insinuates that his chance encounter with the 
cultured cook was a turning-point in his career. 
“ Till the advent of the cook,” says he, “I 
could not endure books, or, indeed, any sort of 
printed paper — passports included.” Why he quitted 


12 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


Smurny we are not told ; but we do know that when 
he left the steamer to become a gardener’s assistant, 
he pursued his studies whenever and wherever he 
had the chance. At the age of fifteen, indeed, his 
thirst for learning induced him to present himself 
at the gates of the University of Kazan, the great 
Volgan seminary, where Tolstoi had been educated 
forty years earlier, in the naive belief that instruction 
of all sorts was to be had there by anyone for the 
simple asking. “ I was mistaken, it appeared,” he 
observes with pathetic sarcasm, “so I entered a 
biscuit factory at three roubles (6s.) a month” He 
has related his experiences of this grinding slavery 
in a subterranean “ stone cage ” in that powerful 
story, “Twenty-Six of Us and one Other.”* 

“ It was a grievous evil life we lived within those 
thick walls. . . . We rose at five o’clock in the 
morning without having had our sleep out, and — 
stupid and indifferent — at six o’clock we were 
sitting at the table to make biscuits from dough 
already prepared for us by our comrades while we 
were still sleeping. . . . Our master called us niggers, 
and gave us rotten entrails for dinner instead of 
butcher’s meat.” No wonder he calls this drudgery 
“ the hardest work I ever experienced.” 

And here there is a blank in our biographical 
record — a blank, however, which may, partially, be 


* No. 2 of the present collection. 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


J 3 


filled up from conjecture. To this period belongs, I 
opine, the first of Pyeshkov’s gipsy-like wanderings 
through Russia. The most casual reader of his tales 
is struck at once by his delight for the free, careless 
life of a vagabond. The justification, the philosophy 
of that life, so to speak, he has put into the mouth 
of that prince of vagabonds, Promtov*, evidently a real 
person, whose antitype Pyeshkov must have met with 
on his rambles, and who is one of his best creations 
It was now, too, that he must have made the acquaint 
ance of the so-called “ Buivshie Lyudi,”*)' or “ Have- 
beens,” whom he has immortalized in so many of his 
tales, that numerous and unhappy class who have 
fallen, beyond recovery, from positions of trust or 
emolument. These, too, were the days when, as he 
tells us, “ I sawed wood, dragged loads,” and, in fact, 
did all sorts of ill-paid, menial labour. On the other 
hand, he made the acquaintance of numerous students 
at Kazan, was admitted into their clubs, and his 
unquenchable ardour for learning revived. We do 
not know what he read during these years, but he 
must have read a very great deal. None can take up 
his works without being impressed by the richness 
and variety of his vocabulary, and it is not too much 
to say that no other Russian writer ever uses, or has 
used, so many foreign terms (English and French 
especially), or has coined so many new words from 


In “A Rolling Stone. 1 


f Lit.) those who have been. 


14 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


extraneous western sources. It is also plain from 
internal evidence that he has studied history, philos- 
ophy, and science with enthusiasm, and I agree with 
those Russian critics who complain that he has 
assimilated more Nietzschianism than is good for him, 
although, on the other hand, I consider that his 
obligations to Nietzsche are far less considerable than 
is commonly supposed. And at the same time he 
was consorting freely with ruffians of every descrip- 
tion,* sleeping round camp fires with murderers and 
thieves, for the sake of a crust of bread, and once 
would actually have starved to death but for the 
charity of a kind-hearted prostitute.f Naturally 
courageous, and with the buoyancy of youth to hold 
him up, he seems to have endured these hardships 
cheerfully enough, and a fine sunset, or a majestic 
seascape, or even a glimpse of the monotonous 
grandeur of the endless steppe, would, as a rule, 
be compensation enough for the fatigues of a hard 
day at its close. But he, too, had his dark moments, 
and in 1888 (when only nineteen) he tried to com- 
mit suicide from sheer wretchedness. Fortunately 
the bullet struck no vital part, and he was nursed 
into convalescence at a hospital in Kazan. “ Having 
sufficiently recovered,” says Gorky, sarcastically 
summing up his position at this period, “ I survived 
in order to devote myself to the apple-selling trade.” 


See “ In the Steppe . 1 


f See “ One Autumn Night . 1 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


15 


On quitting Kazan, Pyeshkov appeared at Tsarit- 
suin, where, for a time, he was a railway porter. He 
was summoned from thence to his native place, 
Nijni- Novgorod, to serve as a recruit. But 
Aleksyei was not of the stuff of which soldiers are 
made. “ They don’t take rubbish like me,” he 
explains, so he eked out a living by selling lager-beer 
in the streets till he attracted the attention of the 
benevolent advocate, A. J. Lanin, who made young 
Pyeshkov his secretary. 

According to Gorky’s own admission, Lanin had 
a considerable influence on his future development 
But Gorky, who always felt himself “out of place 
among intellectual folk,” and has an undisguised 
contempt for mere book-learning, now quitted his 
patron and returned to Tsaritsuin, whence he rambled 
through Southern Russia, the Ukraine, and Bessarabia, 
finally working his way through the Crimea and the 
Kuban District to the Caucasus. The tour was rich 
tn new experiences, and may be said to have matured 
his genius, and taught him more than whole libraries 
of books could have done, but he suffered terrible 
privations by the way. He made a particular study 
during this period of the cities of Southern Russia, 
their commercial activity and their shifting, nonde- 
script population, and that noble story, “ Chelkash,” 
which contains his finest descriptions of nature, was 
the ultimate result of his experiences. 

At Tiflis he worked as a navvy for a time, and in 


1 6 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


1892 his first printed story, “ Makar Chudra,” appeared 
in the columns of the Tiflis journal, Kavkaz. I have 
described elsewhere* his dramatic introduction to the 
astonished but appreciative editor on that occasion. 
Returning to Nijni- Novgorod, Gorky got several 
subsequent stories inserted in the principal news- 
papers of the various Volgan cities ; but he wrote but 
little at this period, and that little did not win general 
favour. 

In 1893 he made the acquaintance of the eminent 
Russian writer, Korolenko, to whose encouragement 
he always attributed his ultimate success. Korolenko 
urged him to have done with trifles, aim high, and, 
above all things, cultivate his style. Shortly after- 
wards, Gorky published his first indisputable master- 
piece, “Chelkash,” No. 8 of the present collection, 
which opened “the big reviews” to the young author, 
and made him famous. “ Chelkash ” was speedily 
followed by a whole series of vivid stories. In 1900 
appeared his first romance, “Thoma Gordyeev,” a 
disappointing performance on the whole, though not 
without superlative merits. The descriptions of 
Volgan scenery are magnificent, and the charac- 
terization is masterly. But it is far too long, and 
the narrative is swamped by floods of second-rate 
philosophy. A collection of all Gorky’s works, under 

* In the Monthly Review for December. In the same number of 
the same periodical appeared the first English translation of one of 
Gorky’s tales, curiously enough, the first tale he wrote. 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


i7 


the title of “ Razskazui ” (Tales), is still in progress. 
At present Gorky is, without doubt, by far the most 
popular author in Russia, and the authorities there 
have already paid him the compliment of branding 
his writings as even more dangerous than those of his 
veteran contemporary, Count Leo Tolstoi. He is 
also, I fancy, likely to give them much more trouble 
in future than the Count, as his temperament and 
genius are distinctly of the volcanic order. 

R. Nisbet Bain. 


b 



TALES FROM GORKY. 


I— IN THE STEPPE. 

We quitted Perekop in the vilest spirits — hungry as 
wolves and at war with all the world. In the course 
of a whole twelve hours we had unsuccessfully em- 
ployed all our talents and capabilities to earn or steal 
something, and when we became convinced, at last, 
that success was impossible either way, we resolved 
to go further on. Whither? Simply — further on. 

This resolution was unanimous, and by mutual 
agreement. Moreover, we were resolved to go further 
in every respect. The manner of life we lately had 
been leading was to be a mere starting-point, and 
although we did not so express ourselves aloud, it 
blazed forth plainly enough in the sullen glare of our 
hungry eyes. 

There were three of us, and we had all quite recently 
made one another’s acquaintance, having first rubbed 
shoulders together at Kherson, in a little tavern on the 
banks of the Dnieper. 

One of us had been a soldier of the railway battalion, 
and after that a sort of upper road-mender on one 


20 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


of the Polish roads ; he was a red-haired, muscular 
chap with cold grey eyes ; he could speak German, 
and was very intimately acquainted with the minutia 
of prison life. 

Our friend did not like to speak very much of his 
past for more or less well-founded reasons, and indeed 
we all of us took each other on trust, at least we 
ostensibly took each other on trust, for, privately, not 
one of us even trusted himself. 

When our second comrade, a withered little manni- 
kin with small teeth, always pressed together scepti- 
cally — when our second comrade, I say, speaking of 
himself, said that he had formerly been a student 
at the University of Moscow, I and the soldier 
accepted the statement as a fact. In reality it was 
all one to us whether he had been a student, a bailiff’s 
man, or a thief. The only matter of any importance to 
us was that at the moment of our first acquaintance he 
stood on our level, in other words : he was starving, 
engaged the particular attention of the police in the 
towns, was an object of suspicion to the peasants in 
the villages, hated everyone with the hatred of an 
impotent, bated, and starving wild beast, and was 
intent on a universal vengeance — in a word, he was 
of precisely the same kidney as ourselves. 

Misfortune is the most durable cement for the joining 
together of natures even diametrically opposed to each 
other, and we were all convinced of our right to 
account ourselves unfortunate. 


IN THE STEPPE. 


21 


I was the third. The modesty inherent in me from 
my earliest years forbids me to say a single word 
as to my merits, and, not wishing to seem naive, I will 
be reticemt as to my defects. But by way of supply- 
ing materials for an estimate of my character, I will 
add, if you like, that I had always accounted myself 
better than other people, and have successfully held 
to the same opinion down to this very day. 

Thus we emerged from Perekop and went further 
on, our objective for that day being the Chabans,* 
from whom it is always possible to cadge a little bread, 
and who very rarely turn tramps away empty-handed. 

I walked with the soldier, “ the student ” was slouch- 
ing along behind us. On his shoulders hung some- 
thing dimly reminiscent of a pea-jacket ; on his head 
reposed a sharp, singular, and smoothly clipped 
fragment of a broad-brimmed hat ; grey breeches, 
covered with variegated patches, fitted tightly round 
his thin little legs, and by way of foot gear he made 
use of the leg of a boot which he had picked up on 
the road, and attached to its proper place by means of 
little bandages ripped from the inner lining of his 
costume. This invention he called sandals, and he 
shambled along in silence, raising a great deal of 
dust, and blinking around with his tiny, greenish 
little eyes. The soldier wore a red woollen shirt, 
which, to use his own words, he had “gained with 


Shepherds of Southern Russia. 


22 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


his own hands ” at Kherson ; over the shirt he wore 
a warm wadding vest ; on his head was a military 
forage cap of indeterminate colour, worn, according 
to the service regulations, “ with the flap of the upper 
segment over the left brow ” ; on his legs were broad 
baggy chumak trousers. He was barefooted. 

I also had clothes on and was barefooted. 

On wei went, and around us in every direction, 
in heroic proportions, stretched the steppe, covered 
by the blue sultry cupola of the cloudless summer 
sky, and lying before us like a huge round black platter. 
The grey dusty road intersected it like a broad ribbon 
and burnt our feet. Here and there we fell in with 
bristly patches of trampled-down corn, having a 
strange resemblance to the long unshaven cheeks of 
the soldier. 

The soldier marched along, singing in a hoarse 
bass : 

“ And thus, oh Holy Eastertide, 

Thy fame we sing and pr-r-raise.” 

While under arms he had held some sort of office 
resembling that of clerk in the battalion church, and 
knew a countless number of liturgical snatches and 
fragments, the knowledge of which he constantly 
abused every time our conversation happened to flag. 

In front of us on the horizon certain forms with 
soft outlines and pleasant shades of colour, from faint 
lilac to fresh pink, began to stand forth prominently. 


IN THE STEPPE. 


2 3 


Evidently those are the Crimean mountains,” said 

the student ” with a dry voice. 

“Mountains?” cried the soldier, “it’s jolly early 
yet to see mountains. They are clouds — simply 
clouds. Don’t you see — just like cranberry vinegar 
with milk.” 

I observed that it would be in the highest degree 
acceptable if they were clouds and did indeed consist 
of cranberry vinegar. This suddenly awakened our 
hunger — the evil of our days. 

Deuce take it ! ” growled the soldier, spitting a 
bit ; “ if only we could fall in with a single living 
soul ! There’s nobody at all ! We shall have to do 
as the bears do in winter-time and suck our own paws.” 

“ I said we ought to have gone towards inhabited 
places,” observed “ the student ” didactically. 

“ V ou said, did you ! ” the soldier fired up at once. 
“Talk — that’s about all you students are up to! 
What sort of inhabited places are there here? The 
Devil knows where they are.” 

“ The student ” was silent, he only pressed his lips 
tightly together. The sun was setting, and the clouds 
on the horizon exhibited a play of colour of every 
shade that language fails to grasp. There was a 
smell of earth and of salt in the air, and this dry 
and tasty smell piqued our appetites still more. 

There was a sucking sensation in our stomachs, a 
strange and unpleasant feeling. It seemed as if the 
juice was gradually trickling out of every muscle in 


24 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


our bodies — trickling away somewhither, and evapora- 
ting, and that our muscles were losing their vital 
elasticity. A feeling of prickly dryness filled the 
hollow of the mouth and throat, there was a dull 
sensation in our heads, and dark spots really arose 
and flashed before our eyes. Sometimes they took 
the form of steaming pieces of meat — nourishing beef. 
Memory provided these “ visions of the past, dumb 
visions,” with their own peculiar fragrance, and then it 
was just as if a knife were turning round in our 
stomachs. 

We went along ail the same, giving one another 
a description of our feelings* casting angry sidelong 
glances about us in case we might peradventure per- 
ceive a sheepfold, and listening for the sharp creak 
of a Tatar arba * carrying fruit to the Armenian 
bazaar. 

But the steppe was desolate and voiceless. 

On the eve of this hard day we three had eaten 
four pounds of rye bread and five melons, had walked 
about thirty-five miles — our income was scarcely equal 
to our expenditure ! — and after going to sleep in the 
bazaar square at Perekop were awakened by hunger. 

“ The student ” had very properly advised us not to lie 
down to sleep, but in the course of the night to occupy 
ourselves with . . . but in orderly society it is not 

considered the right thing openly to speak of any 
project for infringing the rights of property, and I will 

* A two-wheeled cart used in the Crimea. 


IN THE STEPPE. 


2 5 


therefore keep silence. I only want to be just and not 
rude to others even in my own interests. I know that 
people in our highly cultured days are becoming more 
and more soft hearted, and even when they take 
their neighbours by the throat with the obvious in- 
tention of throttling them — they try to do it with 
as much amiability as possible, and with the observ- 
ance of all the consideration which the circumstances 
will admit of. The experience of my own throat 
has caused me to observe this progress in morals, 
and I maintain, with a pleasant feeling of conviction, 
that everything in this world is developing towards 
perfection. In particular this remarkable process is 
solidly established every year by the growth of prisons, 
taverns, and tolerated houses. . . . 

Thus, swallowing the spittle of hunger, and 
endeavouring by friendly conversation to blunt the 
pangs of our stomachs, we went along the desolate 
and silent steppe — went along in the beautiful rays 
of the setting sun, full of a dull hope of something or 
other turning up. In front of us the setting sun was 
silently vanishing in the midst of soft clouds liberally 
embellished by his rays, and behind us and on both 
sides of us a dove-coloured mist, rising from the steppe 
into the sky, fixed unalterably the disagreeable 
horizon surrounding us. 

“ My brothers, let us collect materials for a camp 
fire,” said the soldier, picking up from the road a 
chump of wood ; “ we shall have to make a night 


26 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


of it in the steppe, and the dew is about to fall . . . 

cow-dung, twigs — take anything ! ” 

We dispersed on the road in various directions, 
and began to collect dry grass and everything that 
could possibly burn. Every time we chanced to 
bend down towards the ground a passionate desire 
seized upon our whole body to lie down upon the 
earth — lie there immovably and eat the fat black 
stuff — eat a lot of it, eat till we could eat no more, and 
then fall asleep. Only to eat ! — if we slept for ever- 
more afterwards — to chew and chew and feel the thick 
warm mash flow gradually from our mouths along 
our dried-up gullet and food passages into our 
famished, extenuated stomachs, burning with the 
desire to suck up some sort of nutriment 

" If only we could find some root or other ! ” sighed 
the soldier ; “ there are roots you can eat, you know.” 

But in the black furrowed earth there were 
no roots. The southern night came on quickly, and 
the last ray of the sun had scarce disappeared when 
the stars were twinkling in the dark blue sky, and 
around us, more and more solidly, were gathering the 
dark shadows, and a smooth blankness engulfed the 
whole steppe. 

“ My brothers,” said “ the student,” “ yonder to the 
left a man is lying.” 

“ A man ? ” — the soldier’s tone was dubious — “ what 
should he be lying there for ? ” 

“ Go and ask. He must certainly have bread with 


IN THE STEPPE. 


27 


him if he lies down in the steppe,” explained “ the 
student.” 

The soldier looked in the direction where the man 
lay, and spitting with decision, said : 

“ Let us go to him ! ” 

Only the keen, green eyes of “ the student ” could 
have made out that the dark patch rising up some 
fifty fathoms to the left of the road was a man. We 
went towards him, quickly stepping over the ploughed- 
up hummocks of earth, and we felt the hope of food 
new-born within us put a fresh edge upon our 
hunger. We were already quite close — the man did 
not move. 

“ Perhaps it is not a man at all ! ” — the soldier had 
put into words the thought common to us all. 

But our doubts were resolved that selfsame instant, 
for the heap on the ground suddenly began to move, 
grew in size, and we saw that it was a real living man, 
now on his knees and stretching towards us an arm. 

And he said to us in a hollow, tremulous voice : 

“ Another step — and I fire ! ” 

A short and dry click resounded through the murky 
air. 

We stopped short, as if at the word of command, 
and were silent for some seconds, dumfounded 
by such an unpleasant encounter. 

“ What a beast ! ” growled the soldier expressively. 

“ Well, I never ! ” said “ the student,” reflectively, 
“ to go about with a revolver. A well-plucked one 
evidently ! ” 


28 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ Aye ! ” cried the soldier, “ pretty resolute too.” 

The man never changed his pose, but remained 
silent. 

“ Hie, you there ! We won’t touch you. . . Only 

give us some bread — got any, eh ? Give us some, my 
brother, for Christ’s sake- — be anathema accursed 
one!” 

The last words of the soldier, naturally, were 
muttered between his teeth. 

The man was silent. 

“Do you hear?” cried the soldier again, with a 
spasm of rage and despair. “ Give us bread, we pray 
you ! We won’t go near to you — throw it to us ! ” 

“ All right ! ” said the man curtly. 

He might have said “ my dear brethren ! ” and if 
he had poured into these three Christian words the 
holiest and purest feelings they would not have 
excited us, they would not have humanized us so much 
as did that short and hollow : “ All right ! ” 

“ Do not be afraid of us, good man ! ” began the 
soldier softly, and with a sweet smile on his face, 
although the man could not have seen his smile, for 
he was at least twenty paces distant from us. 

“ We are peaceful folks . . . we are going from 

Russia into the Kuban. We have lost our money on 
the road, we have eaten all our provisions, and this is 
now the second four and twenty hours that we haven’t 
tasted a morsel. . .” 

“ Catch ! ” said the good man, flinging out his arm. 


IN THE STEPPE. 


29 


A black morsel flashed towards us and fell on a 
hummock no i very far from us. “ The student ” fell 
upon it. 

Catch again ! — again ! There is no more ! ” 

When “ the student ” had picked up this original 
gift it appeared that we had four pounds of stale 
wheaten bread. It had been buried in the earth 
and was very stale. The first piece barely arrested our 
attention, the second piece pleased us very much. Stale 
bread is more satisfying than fresh bread, there is 
less moisture in it. 

“ So — and so — and so ! ” said the soldier, concentra- 
ting all his attention on the division of the morsels. 
“ Stay ! That’s fair, I think ! A little comer ought to 
be nibbled off your piece, student, for his ” — he meant 
mine — “ is too little.” 

“ The student,” without a murmur, submitted to the 
subtraction from his portion of about an ounce in 
weight. I snatched it, and popped it into my mouth. 

I began to chew it, chew it gradually, scarce able 
to control the convulsive movement of my jaws, ready 
to pulverize a stone. It afforded me a keen delight 
to feel the jerky throbs of my gullet, and to be able, 
by little and little, to gratify it with little rivulets of 
nutriment. Mouthful after mouthful, warm and in- 
explicably, indescribably tasty, penetrated at last to 
my burning stomach, and seemed instantly to turn into 
blood and muscle. Delight, such a strange, calm, and 
vivifying delight, warmed my heart proportionately 


3 ° 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


to the filling of my stomach, and my general condition 
was similar to that of someone half asleep. I forgot 
all about those accursed days of chronic hunger, and 
I forgot about my comrades engulfed in the rapture 
of those very feelings which I myself had just 
experienced. 

But when I had cast from my palm into my mouth 
the last crumb of brea.d, I felt a mortal desire for more. 

“ He must have about him — anathemas smite him ! 
— some tallow or a bit of meat,” cried the soldier, 
sitting down on the ground opposite to me and 
rubbing his belly with his hands. 

“ Certainly, for the bread has a smell of meat. 

. . . Yes, and he has more bread, I’ll be bound,” 

said “ the student,” and he added very quietly, “ if 
only he hadn’t a revolver ! ” 

“Who is he, I wonder? ” 

“ A hound ! ” said the soldier decidedly. 

We sat together in a close group and cast sidelong 
glances in the direction where sat our benefactor with 
his revolver. Not a sound, not a sign of life now 
proceeded from that quarter. 

Night had assembled her dark forces all around us. 
Mortally still it was in the steppe there — we could 
hear each other’s breath. Now and then from some- 
whither resounded the melancholy whistle of the 
suslik * . . . The stars, the bright flowers of 


The earless marmot of the steppe. 


IN THE STEPPE. 


3i 


heaven, shone down upon us. . We wanted more 
to eat. 

With pride I say it — I was neither better nor worse 
than my casual comrades on this somewhat strange 
night. I persuaded them to get up and go towards 
this man. We need not touch him, but we would eat 
everything we found upon him. He would fire — let 
him! Out of three of us only one could fall, even 
if one fell at all, and even if one of us did 
fall, a mere revolver bullet would scarcely be the 
death of him. 

“ Let us go,” said the soldier, leaping to his feet. 

“ The student ” rose to his feet more slowly than 
the soldier. 

And we went, we almost ran. “ The student ” kept 
well behind us. 

“ Comrade ! ” cried the soldier reproachfully. 

There met us a dull report and the sharp sound 
of a snapping trigger. There was a flash and the 
dry report of a firearm. 

“ It is over ! ” yelled the soldier joyfully, and with a 
single bound he was level with the man. “ Now, you 
devil, I am going to have it out with you.” 

“ The student ” flung himself on the knapsack. 

“ The devil ” fell from his knees on to his back, and 
stretching out his arms gave forth a choking sound. 

“ What the deuce ! ” cried the astonished soldier in 
the very act of raising his foot to give the man a 
kick. “ What is he groaning for like that ? Hie ! 


32 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Hie you! What’s the matter? Have you shot your- 
self or what ? ” 

“ There’s meat and some pancakes and bread — a 
whole lot, my brothers ! ” — and the voice of “ the 
student ” crowed with delight. 

“But what the deuce ails him? — he is at the last 
gasp ! Come then, let us eat, my friends ! ” cried the 
soldier. I had taken the revolver out of the hand of 
the man who had ceased to groan, and now lay 
motionless. There was only a single cartridge in the 
cartridge-box. 

Again we ate — ate in silence. The man also lay 
there in silence, not moving a limb. We paid no 
attention to him whatever. 

“ My brothers, I suppose you have done all this 
simply for the sake of bread ? ” suddenly exclaimed 
a hoarse and tremulous voice. 

We all started. “ The student ” even swallowed a 
crumb, and bending low towards the ground fell a 
coughing. 

The soldier in the midst of his chewing became 
abusive. 

“You soul of a dog! Take care I don’t hack you 
like a clod of wood ! Or would you prefer us to flay 
you alive, eh? — It was ours because we wanted it. 
Shut your foolish mouth, you unclean spirit! A 
pretty thing! — To go about armed and fire at folks! 
May you be anathema ! ” 

He cursed while he ate, and for that reason his 
cursing lost all its expression and force. 


IN THE STEPPE. 


33 


“ Wait till we have eaten our fill and then we’ll settle 
accounts with you,” remarked “ the student ” viciously. 

And then through the silence of the night re- 
sounded a wailing cry which frightened us. 

“ My brothers . . . how could I tell ? I fired 

because I was frightened. I am going from New 
Athos ... to the Government of Smolensk. 
. . . Oh, Lord ! The fever has caught me 

. . . it burns me up like the sun . . . woe is 

me! Even when I left Athos the fever was upon 
me. . . I was doing some carpenter’s work. . . 

I am a carpenter by trade. . . At home is my wife 

and two little girls . . . for three or four years 

I have not seen them . . . my brothers . . . 

you know all ! ” 

“ We are eating, don’t bother,” said “ the student.” 

“ Lord God ! if only I had known that you were 
quiet peaceable folks ... do you think I would 
have fired? And here in the steppe too, at night, my 
brothers, you cannot say I am guilty, surely ? ” 

He spoke and he wept, or to speak more accurately, 
he uttered a sort of tremulous terrified howl. 

“ He’s a miser ! ” said the soldier contemptuously. 

“ He must have money about him,” observed “ the 
student” 

The soldier winked, looked at him, and smiled. 

“ How sharp you are ... I say, give us some 
of the firewood here, and we’ll light up and go to 
sleep.” 

C 


34 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“And how about him? ” inquired “the student.” 

“ The deuce take him ! He may roast himself with 
us if he likes — what ? ” 

“ He might follow us ! ” and “ the student ” shook his 
sharp head. 

We went to fetch the materials we had collected, 
threw them down where the carpenter had brought us 
to a standstill with his threatening cry, set light to 
them, and soon were sitting round a bonfire. It burnt 
quietly in the windless night and lighted up the tiny 
space occupied by us. We ached to go to sleep, 
though for all that we should have liked a little more 
supper first. 

“ My brothers ! ” the carpenter called to us. He 
was lying three yards off, and sometimes it seemed 
to me that he was whispering something. 

“ Well ! ” said the soldier. 

“ May I come to you — to the fire ? I am about to 
die ... all my bones are broken. Oh, Lord! 
it is plain to me that I shall never live to get 
home.” 

“ Crawl along then,” — it was “ the student ” who 
decided. 

Very gradually, as if fearing to lose hand or foot, 
the carpenter moved along the ground towards the 
fire. He was a tall and frightfully wasted man, every 
part of him seemed to be quivering, and his large dim 
eyes expressed the pain that was consuming him. 
His shrivelled face was very bony, and had in the 


IN THE STEPPE. 


35 


light of the fire a yellowish earthy cadaverous colour. 
He was still tremulous, and excited our contemptuous 
pity. Stretching his long thin hands towards the 
fire, he rubbed his bony fingers, and kneaded their 
joints slowly and wearily. At last it went against 
us to look at him. 

“ What do you cut such a figure for, and why do 
you go on foot ? — to save expense, eh ? ” asked the 
soldier surlily. 

“ I was so advised . . . don’t go, said they, by 

water, but go by way of the Crimea, for the air, they 
said. And lo! I cannot go, I am dying, my brothers. 
I shall die alone in the steppe . . . the birds will 

pick my bones and nobody will know about it. . . 

My wife . . . my little daughters will be waiting 
for me. . . I wrote to them . . . and my 
bones will be washed by the rains of the steppe. . . 

Lord, Lord!” 

He uttered the anguished howl of a wounded 
wolf. 

“ Oh, the devil ! ” cried the soldier, waxing wrath, 
and springing to his feet. “ How you whine ! 
Can’t you leave folks in peace! You’re dying, 
eh? Well, die then, and hold your tongue. . . 

What use are you to anyone ? Shut up ! ” 

“ Give him one on the chump ! ” suggested “ the 
student” 

" Lie down and sleep ! ” said I, " and if you want 
to be by the fire, don’t howl, really, you know . . .” 


36 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ Now you have heard,” said the soldier savagely, 
“ pray understand. You fancy we shall pity you and 
pay attention to you because you flung bread to us 
and fired bullets at us, do you? You sour-faced devil 
you ! Others would have . . . Ugh ! ” 

The soldier ceased and stretched himself on the 
ground. 

“ The student ” was already lying down. I lay down 
too. The frightened carpenter huddled himself into 
a heap, and edging gradually towards the fire began to 
look at it in silence. I lay on his right, and heard 
how his teeth chattered. “ The student ” lay on his 
left, and appeared to have gone to sleep straight off 
after rolling himself into a ball. The soldier, placing 
his hands beneath his head, lay face upwards, and 
looked at the sky. 

“What a night, eh? — what a lot of stars! — and 
warm, too ! ” said he, turning to me after a time. 
“ What a sky — a bed-top, not a sky. Friend, I love 
this vagabond life. It is cold and hungry, but then 
it is as free as the air. . . You have no superior 
over you . . . you are the master of your own 
life. . . Though you bite your own head off, 
nobody can say a word to you. . . It is good. . . 
I have been very hungry and very angry these last 
few days . . . and now I am lying here as if 

nothing had happened and look at the sky. . . The 

stars blink at me. . . It is just as if they were 

saying : What matters it, Lakutin ; go and know, and 


IN THE STEPPE. 


37 


be subject to nobody on this earth. . . There you 

are . . . my heart is happy. And how is it with 

you, eh, carpenter? Don’t be angry with me, and 
fear nothing. We ate up your food, I know, but it 
doesn’t matter ; you had food and we had none, so 
we ate up yours. And you are a savage fellow, you 
go about firing bullets. Are you not aware that 
bullets may do a man harm? I was very angry with 
you a little while ago, and if you had not fallen down 
I should have well trounced you, my brother, for your 
cheek. But as to the food — to-morrow you can go 
back to Perekop and buy some there . . . you 

have money ... I know it. . . How long is 

it since you caught the fever ? ” 

For a long time the deep bass of the soldier and 
the tremulous voice of the sick carpenter hummed in 
my ears. The night was dark, almost black, obliter- 
ating everything here below, and a fresh sappy breeze 
streamed out of its bosom. 

A uniform light and an enlivening warmth pro- 
ceeded from the fire. One’s eyes closed insensibly, 
and before them, as if seen through a vision, passed 
something soothing and purifying. 

* * * * * 

“ Get up ! awake ! Let us go ! ” 

I opened my eyes with a feeling of terror and 
quickly sprang to my feet, the soldier helping by 
pulling me violently from the ground by the arm. 


38 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ Come, look alive ! March ! ” 

His face was grim and anxious. I looked around 
me. The sun was rising, and his rosy rays already 
lay upon the immovable and dark blue face of the 
carpenter. His mouth was open, his eyes projected 
far out of their sockets, and stared with a glassy 
look expressive of horror. The clothes covering his 
bosom were all torn, and he lay in an unnatural, 
broken-up sort of pose. There was no sign of “ the 
student.” 

“Well, have you looked your fill! . . Come 

on, I say ! ” said the soldier excitedly, dragging at my 
sleeve. 

“Is he dead?” I asked, shivering in the fresh 
morning air. 

“ Certainly. And he might have throttled you 
. . . and you might have died,” explained the 

soldier. 

“ He ! Who ? ‘ The Student * ? ” I exclaimed. 

“Well, who else? It wasn’t you, eh? And I 
suppose you won’t say it was — me? Well, so much 
for your bookworms ! He managed very cleverly 
with the man . . . and has left his comrades in 

the lurch. Had I suspected it, I could have killed ‘ the 
student ’ yesterday evening. I could have killed him 
at a blow . . . Smash with my fist on his fore- 

head, and there would have been one blackguard the 
less in the world. See what he has done, and 
remember it! Now we must move on so that not 


IN THE STEPPE. 


39 


a human eye may see us in the steppe. Do you 
understand? Recollect, we came upon the carpenter 
to-day, throttled and plundered. And we’ll search for 
our brother . . . find out in what direction he 

went, and where he passed the night. Well, suppose 
they seize us . . . although we have nothing upon 

us . . . except his revolver in my bosom! ” 

“ Throw it away,” I advised the soldier. 

“ Throw it away ? ” said he thoughtfully, “ why it’s 
a precious thing. And then, too, they may not seize 
us yet . . . No, I’ll not chuck it . . . Who 

knows that the carpenter carried arms ? I’ll not chuck 
it . . . It’s worth three roubles . . . And 

there’s a bullet in it. How I should like to fire this 
selfsame bullet into the ear of our dear comrade! 
I wonder how much money he filched, the hound! 
May he be anathema ! ” 

“ And there are the carpenter’s little daughters ! ” 
said I. 

“Daughters? What? . . . Well, they’ll grow 

up, and it’s not for us to find them husbands ; they 
don’t concern us at all . . . Let us go, my 
brother, quickly. Whither shall we go ? ” 

“ I don’t know . . . it’s all one to me.” 

“ And I don’t know, and I know it is all one. Let 
us go to the right . . . the sea must be 
there.” 

We went to the right. 

I turned to look back. Far away from us in the 


40 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


steppe rose a dark little mound, and on it the sun 
was shining. 

“ Are you looking to see whether he will rise again ? 
Don’t be afraid, he won’t rise up to pursue us. The 
scholar is evidently a chap up to a dodge or two, and 
dealt with the case thoroughly. Well, he has saddled 
us with it finely. And our comrade too! Ah, my 
brother! Folks are degenerating ! From year to 
year they degenerate more and more,” observed the 
soldier sadly. 

The steppe, speechless and desolate, flooded by the 
bright morning sun, unfolded itself all around us, 
blending on the horizon with the sky, so bright and 
friendly and lavish of light, that any black and 
iniquitous deed seemed impossible in the midst of 
the grand spaciousness of that free expanse, covered 
by the blue cupola of heaven. 

“Feel hungry, brother?” said the soldier, twisting 
himself a cigarette out of his makharka .* 

“ Where are we going to-day, and how ? ” 

“ That’s the question ! ” 

***** 

Here the narrator — my next neighbour in the 
hospital hammock — broke off his story and said to 
me : 

“ That’s all. I became very friendly with this 
soldier, and accompanied him all the way to the Kars 


Peasant’s tobacco. 


IN THE STEPPE. 


4i 


District. He was a good and very experienced little 
fellow, a typical barelegged vagrant. I respected 
him. We went together all the way to Asia Minor, 
and then we lost sight of each other.” 

“Did you think sometimes of the carpenter?” I 
asked. 

“ As you see — or as you hear.” 

“ And there was nothing more ? ” 

He smiled. 

“ What ought my feelings to have been in such 
a case — do you mean that? I was not to blame for 
what happened to him, just as you are not to blame for 
what has happened to me. And nobody is to blame 
for anything:, for all of us alike are — beasts of the same 
kidney.” 


I 


y* J^ v 

<h 


,fc >' 


u )' 


II. — TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE 
OTHER* 


There were twenty-six of us — twenty-six living 
machines shut up in a damp cellar, where from morn- 
ing to evening, we kneaded dough to make cakes 
and biscuits. The windows of our cellar looked upon 
a ditch yawning open before them and crammed full 
of bricks, green with damp ; the window-frames were 
partly covered from the outside by an iron grating, 
and the light of the sun could not reach us through 
the window-panes covered with flour dust. Our 
master had closed up the windows with iron in order 
that we might not give away a morsel of his bread 
to the poor, or to those of our comrades who were 
living without work, and therefore starving ; our 
master called us galley-slaves, and gave us rotten 
entrails for dinner instead of butcher’s meat. 

It was a narrow, stuffy life we lived in that stone 
cage beneath the low and heavy rafters covered with 
soot and cobwebs. It was a grievous evil life we lived 
within those thick walls, plastered over with patches 

* Written in 1899. 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 


43 


of dirt and mould . . . We rose at five o’clock 

in thei morning, without having had our sleep out, 
and — stupid and indifferent — at six o’clock we were 
sitting behind the table to make biscuits from 
dough already prepared for us by our comrades while 
we were still sleeping. And the whole day, from early 
morning to ten o’clock at night, some of us sat at the 
table kneading the yeasty dough and rocking to and 
fro so as not to get benumbed, while the others mixed 
the flour with water. And all day long, dreamily and 
wearily, the boiling water hummed in the cauldron 
where the biscuits were steamed, and the shovel of 
the baker rasped swiftly and evilly upon our ears 
from beneath the oven as often as it flung down baked 
bits of dough on. the burning bricks. From morning 
to evening, in one corner of the stove, they burned 
wood, and the red reflection of the flames flickered on 
the wall of the workshop as if silently laughing at 
us. The huge stove was like the misshapen head of 
some fairy-tale monster — it seemed to stick out from 
under the ground, opening its wide throat full of 
bright fire, breathing hotly upon us, and regarding 
our endless labour with its two black vent-holes just 
over its forehead. Those two deep cavities were like 
eyes — the passionless and pitiless eyes of a monster ; 
they always regarded us with one and the same sort 
of dark look, as if they were weary of looking at their 
slaves and, not expecting anything human from us, 
despised us with the cold contempt of worldly wisdom. 


44 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


From day to day in tormenting dust, in dirt 
brought in by our fefet from the yard, in a dense 
malodorous steaming vapour, we kneaded dough and 
made biscuits, moistening them with our sweat, and 
we hated our work with a bitter hatred ; we never ate 
of that which came forth from our hands, preferring 
black bread to the biscuits. Sitting behind the long 
table, face to face with each other, nine over against 
nine, we mechanically used our arms and fingers 
during the long hours, and were so accustomed to our 
work that we no longer noticed our own movements. 
And we had examined one another so thoroughly 
that everyone of us knew all the wrinkles in the faces 
of his comrades. We had nothing to talk about, so 
we got accustomed to talking about nothing, and were 
silent the whole time unle^ we quarrelled — there is 
always a way to make a man quarrel, especially if he 
be a comrade. But it was rarely that we even quarrelled 
— how can a man be up to much if he is half 
dead, if he is like a figure-head, if his feelings are 
blunted by grievous labour? But silence is only a 
terror and a torture to those who have already said 
all they have to say and can say no more ; but for 
people who have not begun to find their voices, silence 
is simple and easy. . . Sometimes, however, we 

sang; it came about in this way. One of us in the 
midst of his work would suddenly whinny like a tired 
horse and begin to croon very softly one of those pro- 
tracted ditties, the sadly caressing motif of which 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 


45 


always lightens the heaviness of the singer’s soul. One 
of us would begin singing, I say, and the rest would, at 
first, merely listen to his lonely song, and beneath the 
heavy roof of the cellar his song would flicker and die 
out like a tiny camp-fire in the steppe on a grey autumn 
night when the grey sky hangs over the earth like a 
leaden roof. Presently the first singer would be 
joined by another, and then two voices, softly and 
sadly, would float upwards from the stifling heat of our 
narrow ditch. And then, suddenly, several voices 
together would lay hold of the song, and the song would 
swell forth like a wave, and become stronger and more 
sonorous, and seem to amplify the heavy grey walls 
of our stony prison. 

And so it came about that the whole six-and-twenty 
of us would find ourselves singing — our sustained, 
sonorous concert would nil the work-room, and the 
song would seem not to have room enough therein. 
It would beat against the stone wall, wail, weep, stir 
within the benumbed heart the sensation of a gentle 
tickling ache, re-open old wounds in it, and awake 
it to anguish. The singers would sigh deeply and 
heavily ; one of them would unexpectedly break off his 
own song and listen to the singing of his comrades, and 
then his voice would blend once more with the 
common billow of sound. Another of us, perhaps, 
would utter an anguished “ Ah ! ” and then continue 
singing with fast-closed eyes. No doubt the broad 
dense wave of sound presented itself to his mind 


46 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


as a road stretching far, far away — a broad road lit 
up by the bright sun, with he himself walking along 
that road. . . . 

And all the time the flame of the furnace was 
flickering and the baker’s shovel was harshly scraping 
the brick floor, and the boiling water was humming in 
the cauldron, and the reflection of the fire was quiver- 
ing on the wall and laughing at us noiselessly. . . 

And we were wailing forth in the words of others 
our dull misery, the heavy anguish of living beings 
deprived of the sun, the anguish of slaves. Thus we 
lived, twenty-six of us, in the cellar of a large stone 
house, and life was as grievous to us as if all the 
three upper storeys of this house had been built right 
upon our very shoulders. 

***** 

But, besides the singing, we had one other good 
thing — a thing we set great store by and which, 
possibly, stood to us in the place of sunshine. In 
the second storey of our house was a gold- embroidery 
factory, and amongst the numerous factory girls em- 
ployed there was a damsel sixteen years old, 
Tanya by name. Every morning she would come to 
the little window pierced through the door in the 
wall of our workshop, and pressing against it her tiny 
rosy face, with its merry blue eyes, Would cry 
to us with a musical, friendly voice : “ Poor little 
prisoners ! give me some little biscuits ! ” 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 


47 


All of us would instantly turn round at the 
familiar sound of that bright voice, and gaze good- 
naturedly and joyously at the pure virginal little face 
smiling upon us so gloriously. It became a usual 
and very pleasant thing for us to see the little nose 
pressed against the window-pane, to see the tiny white 
teeth gleaming from under the rosy lips parted by a 
smile. There would then be a general rush to open 
the door, each one trampling upon his fellows in his 
haste, and then in she would come, always so bright 
and pleasant, and stand before us, her head perched 
a little on one side, holding up her apron and smiling 
all the time. The long thick locks of her chestnut 
hair, falling across her shoulders, lay upon her breast. 
We dirty, grimy, misshapen wretches stood there 
looking up at her — the threshold of the door was four 
steps above the level of the floor — we had to raise 
our heads to look at her, we would wish her good 
morning, and would address her in especial language 
— the words seemed to come to us expressly for her 
and for her alone. When we conversed with her 
our voices were gentler than usual, and our jests were 
less rough. We had quite peculiar and different 
manners — and all for her. The baker would take out 
of the oven a shovelful of the ruddiest, best toasted 
biscuits, and skilfully fling them into Tanya’s apron. 

“ T ake care you don’t fall into the clutches of the 
master ! ” we would always caution her. And she, 
roguishly laughing, would call to us : “ Good-bye, 


48 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


little prisoners,” and vanish as quickly as a little 
mouse. 

Only — long after her departure, we would talk 
pleasantly about her among ourselves ; we always 
said the same thing, and we said it late and early, 
because she and we and everything around us was 
always the same early and late. It is a heavy torment 
for a man to live where everything around him is 
unchanging, and if this does not kill the soul within 
him, the longer he lives the more tormenting will 
the immobility of his environment become. We always 
spoke of women in such a way that sometimes it went 
against the grain with us to listen to our own 
coarse, shameful speeches, and it will be understood 
that the sort of women we knew were unworthy to 
be alluded to in any other way. But we never spoke 
ill of Tanya. None of us ever permitted himself to 
lay so much as a finger upon her ; nay, more, she 
never heard a loose jest from any of us. Possibly this 
was because she never remained very long with us : she 
twinkled before our eyes like a star falling from heaven 
and vanished ; but, possibly also, it was because she was 
so tiny and so very pretty, and everything beautiful 
awakens respect for it even in coarse people. And 
there was something else. Although our prison-like 
labour had made dull brutes of us, for all that we were 
still human beings, and, like all human beings, we could 
not live without worshipping something or other. We 
had nothing better than she, and nobody but she 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 49 


took any notice of us who lived in that vault ; nobody, 
though scores of people lived in that house. And 
finally — and that, after all, was the chief thing — 
we all of us accounted her as in some sort our own, 
as, in some sort, only existing thanks to our biscuits ; 
we looked upon it as our duty to give her biscuits 
piping hot, and this became to us a daily sacrifice 
to our idol ; it became almost a sacred office, and 
every day bound us to her more and more. Besides 
the biscuits we gave to Tanya a good deal of advice 
— she was to put on warmer clothes, not run rapidly 
upstairs, not to carry heavy loads of wood. She 
listened to our advice with a smile, responded to 
it with laughter, and never followed it at all ; but we 
were not offended with her on that account, we only 
wanted to show her that we were taking care of her. 

Sometimes she asked us to do different things for 
her; such, for instance, as to open the heavy cellar 
door, to chop up wood and so on, and we joyfully, 
nay, with a sort of pride, did for her all that she 
asked us to do. 

But, once, when one of us asked her to mend his only 
shirt, she sniffed contemptuously and said : “ What 
next! do you think I’ve nothing better to do.” 

We laughed heartily at the silly fellow — and never 
asked her to do anything more. We loved her — 
and when that is said all is said. A man always 
wants to lay his love upon someone, although some- 
time he may crush her beneath the weight of it, and 

D 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


50 

sometimes he may soil her ; he may poison the life of 
his neighbour with his love, because in loving he 
does not revere the beloved. We were obliged to love 
Tanya because we had none else to love. 

At times one or other of us would begin to reason 
about it like this : “ Why are we spoiling the wench 
like this? What is there in her after all? ’Eh? We 
are making a great deal of fuss about her ! ” 

The fellow who ventured to use such language 
was pretty roughly snubbed, I can tell you. We 
wanted something to love, we had found what 
we wanted, and we loved it ; and what we six- 
and-twenty loved was bound to be inviolate, because 
it was our holy shrine, and everyone who ran contrary 
to us in this matter was our enemy. No doubt people 
often love what is not really good — but here we were, 
all twenty-six of us, in the same boat, and therefore 
what we considered dear we would have others regard 
as sacred. 

***** 

Besides the biscuit factory our master had a fancy- 
bakery; it was located in the same house, and only 
separated from our hole by a wall ; but the fancy- 
bakers — there were four of them — kept us at arm’s- 
length, considering their work as cleaner than ours, 
and for that reason considering themselves as better 
than we. So they did not come into our workshop, 
and laughed contemptuously at us when they met us 
in the yard. We, too, did not go to them; our 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 51 


master had forbidden us to do so for fear we 
should steal the milk scones. We did not like 
the fancy-bakers because we envied them. Their 
work was lighter than ours ; they got more than 
we did and were better fed ; they had a spacious, 
well-lighted workshop, and they were all so clean 
and healthy — quite the opposite to us. We indeed, 
the whole lot of us, looked greyish or yellowish ; 
three of us were suffering from disease, others 
from consumption, one of us was absolutely 
crippled by rheumatism. They, on feast-days and in 
their spare time, put on pea-jackets and boots that 
creaked ; two of them had concertinas, and all of 
them went strolling in the Park — we went about in 
little better than dirty rags, with down-at-heel 
slippers or bast shoes on our feet, and the police 
would not admit us into the Park — how could we 
possibly love the fancy-bakers? 

Presently we heard that their overseer had taken 
to drink, that the master had dismissed him and hired 
another, and that this other was a soldier who went 
about in a rich satin waistcoat, and on great occasions 
wore a gold chain. We were curious to see such 
a toff, and, in the hope of seeing him, took it in 
turns to run out into the yard one after the other. 

But he himself appeared in our workshop. He 
kicked at the door, it flew open, and, keeping it open, 
he stood on the threshold, smiled, and said to usr 
“ God be with you ! I greet you, my children ! ” 


52 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


The frosty air, rushing through the door in thick 
smoky clouds, whirled round his feet, and there he 
stood on the threshold looking down upon us from his 
eminence, and from beneath his blonde, skilfully 
twisted moustaches gleamed his strong yellow teeth. 
His vest really was something quite out of the common 
— it was blue, embroidered with flowers, and had 
a sort of sparkle all over it, and its buttons were made 
of pretty little pearls. And the gold chain was 
there . . . 

He was handsome, that soldier was, quite tall, 
robust, with ruddy cheeks, and his large bright eyes 
looked good and friendly and clear. On his head 
was a white stiffly starched cap, and from beneath 
his clean spotless spats appeared the bright tops of 
his modish brilliantly polished boots. 

Our baker asked him, respectfully, to shut the door. 
He did so, quite deliberately, and began asking us 
questions about our master. We outdid each other 
in telling him that our master was a blood-sucker, 
a slave-driver, a malefactor, and a tormentor ; every- 
thing in short that we could and felt bound to say 
about our master, but it is impossible to write it down 
here. The soldier listened, twirled his moustache, 
and regarded us with a gentle, radiant look. 

“ And I suppose now you’ve a lot of little wenches 
about here ? ” he suddenly said. 

Some of us laughed respectfully, others made 
languishing grimaces ; one of us made it quite clear 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 53 


to the soldier that there were wenches here — a round 
dozen of them. 

“Do you amuse yourselves?” asked the soldier, 
blinking his eyes. 

Again we laughed, not very loudly, and with some 
confusion of face . . . Many of us would have 

liked to show the soldier that they were as dashing 
fellows as himself, but none dared to do so ; no, not 
one. One of us indeed hinted as much by murmur- 
ing : “ Situated as we are . . .” 

“Yes, of course 1 , it would be hard for you!” ob- 
served the soldier confidentially, continuing to stare 
at us. “You ought to be — -well, not what you are. 
You’re down on your luck — there’s a way of holding 
one’s self — there’s the look of the thing — you know 
what I mean! And women you know like a man 
with style about him. He must be a fine figure of 
a man — everything neat and natty you know. And 
then, too, a woman respects strength. Now what 
do you think of that for an arm, eh ? ” 

The soldier drew his right arm from his pocket, 
with the shirt-sleeve stripped back, bare to the elbow, 
and showed it to us. It was a strong, white arm, 
bristling with shiny, gold-like hair. 

“ Legs and breast the same — plenty of grit there, 
eh ? And then, too, a man must be stylishly dressed, 
and must have nice things. Now look at me — all the 
women love me ! I neither call to them nor wink at 
them — they come falling on my neck by the dozen.” 


54 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


He sat down on a flour-basket and discoursed to 
us for a long time about how the women loved 
him, and how valiantly he comported himself with 
them. After he had gone, and when the' creaking 
door had closed behind him, we were silent for a long 
time, thinking of him and of his yarns. And alter 
a bit we suddenly all fell a-talking at once, and agreed 
unanimously that he was a very pleasant fellow. He 
was so straightforward and jolly — he came and sat 
down and talked to us just as if he were one of 
us. No one had elver come and talked to us in such 
a friendly way before. And we talked of him and 
of his future successes with the factory girls at the 
gold-embroiderer’s, who, whenever they met us in the 
yard, either curled their lips contemptuously, or gave 
us a wide berth, or walked straight up to us as if 
we weire not in their path at all. And as for us, 
we only feasted our eyes upon them when we met 
them in the yard, or when they passed by our window, 
dressed in winter in peculiar little fur caps and fur 
pelisses, and in summer in hats covered with flowers, 
and with sunshades of various colours in their hands. 
But, on the other hand, among ourselves, we talked 
of these girls in such a way that, had they heard it, 
they would have gone mad with rage and shame. . . 

“ But how about little Tanya — I hope he won’t 
spoil her ! ” said our chief baker suddenly with a 
gloomy voice. 

We were all silent, so greatly had these words 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 55 


impressed us. We had almost forgotten about 
Tanya: the soldier had shut her out from us, as it 
were, with his fine burly figure 1 . Presently a noisy 
dispute began. Some said that Tanya would not 
demean herself by any such thing ; others maintained 
that she would be unable to stand against the soldier ; 
finally, a third party proposed that if the soldier 
showed any inclination to attach himself to Tanya, 
we should break his ribs. And, at last, we all resolved 
to keep a watch upon the soldier and Tanya, and 
warn the girl to beware of him . . . And so the 

dispute came to an end. 

***** 

A month passed by. The soldier baked his fancy- 
rolls, walked out with the factory girls, and frequently 
paid us a visit in our workshop, but of his victories over 
the wenches he said never a word, but only twirled 
his moustaches and noisily smacked his lips. 

Tanya came to us every morning for her “little 
biscuits,” and was always merry, gentle, and friendly 
with us. We tried to talk to her about the soldier — 
she called him “ the goggle-eyed bull-calf,” and other 
ridiculous names, and that reassured us. We were 
proud of our little girl when we saw how the factory 
girls clung to the soldier. Tanya’s dignified attitude 
towards him seemed to raise the whole lot of us, and we, 
as the directors of her conduct, even began to treat 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


56 

the soldier himself contemptuously. But her we loved 
more than ever, her we encountered each morning 
more and more joyfully and good-humouredly. 

But one day the soldier came to us a little the 
worse for liquor, he sat him down, began laughing, 
and when we asked him what he was laughing about, 
he explained : 

“ Two of the wenches have been quarrelling about 
me, Liddy and Gerty,” said he. “ How they did 
blackguard each other! Ha, ha, ha! They caught 
each other by the hair, and were! down on the floor 
in a twinkling, one on the top of the other; ha, ha, 
ha ! And they tore and scratched like anything, and 
I was nearly bursting with laughter. Why can’t 
women fight fair? Why do they always scratch, 
eh?” 

He was sitting on the bench ; there he sat so healthy, 
clean, and light-hearted, and roared with laughter. 
We were silent. Somehow, or other, he was disagree- 
able to us at that moment. 

“No, I can’t make it out. What luck I do have 
with women, it is ridiculous. I’ve but to wink, and 
— she is ready. The d-deuce is in it.” 

His white arms, covered with shining gold down, 
rose in the air and fell down again on his knees 
with a loud bang. And he regarded us with such a 
friendly look of amazement, just as if he himself 
were frankly puzzled by the felicity of his dealings 
with women. His plump, ruddy face regularly shone 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 57 


with happiness and self-complacency, and he kept on 
noisily smacking his lips. 

Our chief baker scraped hi9 shovel along the 
hearth violently and angrily, and suddenly remarked, 
with a sneer : 

“ It is no great feat of strength to fell little fir-trees, 
but to fell a full-grown pine is a very different 
matter . . ” 

“ Is that meant for me, now ? ” queried the soldier. 

“ It is meant for you.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ Nothing . . . Never mind.” 

“Nay, stop a bit! What’s your little game? 
What pine-tree do you mean ? ” 

Our master-baker didn’t answer, he was busily 
working with his shovel at the stove, shovelled out 
the well-baked biscuits, sifted those that were ready, 
and flung theim boisterously on to the floor to the 
lads who were arranging them in rows on the bast 
wrappings. He seemed to have forgotten the soldier 
and his talk with him. But the soldier suddenly 
became uneasy. He rose to his feet and approached 
the stove, running the risk of a blow in the chest 
from the handle of the shovel which was whirling 
convulsively in the air. 

“ Come, speak — what she did you mean? You have 
insulted me. Not a single she shall ever get the better 
of me, n-rio — I say. And then, too, you used such 
offensive words to me . . 


5 « 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


He really seemed to be seriously offended. No 
doubt he had but a poor opinion of himself except 
on this one point : his ability to win women. 
Possibly, except this one quality, there was nothing 
really vital in the man at all, and only this single 
quality allowed him to feel himself a living man. 

There) are people who look upon some disease, 
either of the body, or of the soul, as the best and 
most precious thing in life. They nurse it all their 
lives, and only in it do they live at all. Though 
they suffer by it, yet they live upon it. They com- 
plain of it to other people, and by means of it 
attract to themselvels the attention of their neigh- 
bours. They use it as a means of obtaining sympathy, 
and without it — they are nothing at all. Take away 
from them this disease, cure them, and they will be un- 
happy because they are deprived of the only means of 
living — there they stand empty. Sometimes the life 
of a man is poor to such a degree that he is in- 
voluntarily obliged to put a high value on some vice, 
and live thereby; indeed, we may say straight out 
that very often people become vicious from sheer 
ennui. 

The soldier was offended, rushed upon. our master- 
baker, and bellowed : “ Come, I say — speak out ! Who 
was it?” 

“ Speak out, eh ? ” — and the master-baker suddenly 
turned round upon him. 

“ Yes!— Well?” 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 


59 


“ Do you know Tanya? ” 

“ Well!” 

“Well, there you are! — try her!” 

“I?” 

“ You.” 

“ Pooh ! That’s nothing.” 

“ Let us see ! ” 

“You shall see. Ha-ha-ha!” 

“ She look at you ! ” 

“ Give me a month ! ” 

“ What a braggart you are, soldier ! ” 

“ A fortnight ! I’ll show you. Who’s she ? Little 
Tanya! Pooh!” 

“ And now be off ! — you’re in the way.” 

“A fortnight, I say — and the thing’s done. Poor 
you, I say ! ” 

“Be off, I say.” 

Our baker suddenly grew savage, and flourished 
his shovel. The soldier backed away from him in 
astonishment, and observed us in silence. “ Good ! ” 
he said at last with ominous calmness — and departed. 

During the dispute we all remained silent, we were 
too deeply interested in it to speak. But when the 
soldier departed, there arose from among us a loud 
and lively babble of voices. 

Someone shrieked at the baker : “ A pretty business 
you’ve set a-going, Paul ! ” 

“ Go on working, d’ye hear ! ” replied the master- 
baker fiercely. 


6o 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


We felt that the soldier would make the assault, 
and that Tanya was in danger. We felt this, and 
yet at the same time we were all seized by a burning 
curiosity that was not unpleasant — what would 
happen? Would Tanya stand firm against the 
soldietr? And almost all of us cried, full of con- 
fidence : 

“Little Tanya? She’ll stand firm enough!” 

We had all of us a frightful longing to put the 
fortitude of our little idol to the test. We excitedly 
proved to each other that our little idol was a strong 
little idol, and would emerge victorious from this 
encounter. It seemed to us, at last, that we had not 
egged on our soldier enough, that he was forgetting 
the contest, and that we ought to spur his vanity 
just a little bit. From that day forth we began to 
live a peculiar life, at high nervous tension, such as 
we had never lived before. We quarrelled with each 
other for days together, just as if we had all grown 
wiser, and were able to talk more and better. It 
seemed to us as if we were playing a sort of game 
with the Devil, and the stake on our part was — Tanya. 
And when we heard from the fancy-bread-bakers that 
the soldier had begun “ to run after our little Tanya,” 
it was painfully well with us, and so curious were we 
to live it out, that we did not even observe that our 
master, taking advantage of our excitement, had added 
14 poods* of paste to our daily task. We practically 


560 lbs. 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 61 


never left off working at all. The name of Tanya 
neve* left our tongues all day. And every morning 
we awaited her with a peculiar sort of impatience. 

Nevertheless we said not a word to her of the_ con- 
test actually proceeding. We put no questions to 
her, and were kind and affectionate to her as before. 
Yet in our treatment of her there had already crept 
in something new and strangely different to our 
former feeling for Tanya — and this new thing was a 
keen curiosity, keen and cold as a steel knife. 

“ My friends, the time’s up to-day,” said the master- 
baker one morning as he set about beginning his work. 

We knew that well enough without any reminder 
from him, but we trembled all the same. 

“ Look at her well, she’ll be here immediately,” con- 
tinued the baker. 

Someone exclaimed compassionately : 

“ As if eyes could see anything ! ” 

And again a lively, stormy debate arose among us. 
To-day we were to know at last how clean and 
inviolable was the vessel in which we had placed 
our best That morning, all at once and as if for 
the first time, we began to feel that we were really 
playing a great game, and that this test of the purity 
of our divinity might annihilate it altogether so far as 
we were concerned. We had all heard during the 
last few days that the soldier was obstinately and per- 
sistently persecuting Tanya, yet how was it that none 
of us asked her what her relations with him were? 


62 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


And she used to come to us regularly, every morning, 
for her little biscuits, and was the same as ever. 

And this day also we very soon heard her 
voice. 

“ Little prisoners, I have come. . 

We crowded forward to meet her, and when she 
came in, contrary to our usual custom, we met her 
in silence. Looking at her with all our eyes, we knew 
not what to say to her, what to ask her. We stood 
before her a gloomy, silent crowd. She was visibly 
surprised at this unusual reception — and all at once we 
saw her grow pale, uneasy, fidget in her place, 
and inquire in a subdued voice : 

“ What’s the matter with you ? ” 

“ And how about yourself ? ” the master-baker 
sullenly said, never taking his eyes off her. 

“ Myself ? What do you mean ? ” 

“ Oh, nothing, nothing.” 

“ Come, give me the biscuits ! — quick ! ” 

Never before had she been so sharp with us. 

“ You’re in a hurry,” said the baker, not moving and 
never taking his eyes from her face. 

Then she suddenly turned round and disappeared 
through the door. 

The baker caught up his shovel and, turning towards 
the stove, remarked quietly: 

“It means — she’s all ready for him. Ah, that 
soldier ... the scoundrel ... the skunk ! ” 

We like a flock of sheep, rubbing shoulders with 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 63 


each other, went to our table, sat down in silence, and 
wearily began to work. Presently, someone said : 

“ Yet is it possible . . .?” 

“ Well, well, what’s the good of talking? ” screeched 
the baker. 

We all knew that he was a wise man, far wiser than 
we. And we understood his exclamation as a con- 
viction of the) victory of the soldier. . . We felt 

miserable and uneasy. 

At twelve o’clock — dinner-time — the soldier arrived. 
He was as usual spruce and genteel and — as he always 
did — looked us straight in the eyes. But we found 
it awkward to look at him. 

“ Well, my worthy gentlemen, if you like, I’ll show 
you a bit of martial prowess,” said he, laughing proudly. 
“ Just you come out into the outhouse and look through 
the crevices — do you understand ? ” 

Out we went, elbowing each other on the way, and 
glued our faces to the crevices in the boarded-up wall 
of the outhouse looking upon the courtyard. We had 
not long to wait. Very soon, at a rapid pace, and with a 
face full of anxiety, Tanya came tearing through the 
yard, springing over the puddles of stale snow and mud. 
Shortly afterwards, in not the least hurry and whistling 
as he went, appeared the soldier, making his way in 
the same direction as Tanya, evidently they had 
arranged a rendezvous. His arms were thrust deep 
down in his pockets, and his moustaches were moving 
up and down ... He also disappeared . . . 


6 4 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Then the rain came, and we watched the raindrops fall- 
ing into the puddles, and the puddles wrinkle beneath 
their impact The day was damp and grey — a very 
wearying day. Snow still lay upon the roofs, and on 
the earth dark patches of mud were already appear- 
ing. And the snow on the roofs also got covered 
with dirty dark-brown smuts. The rain descended 
slowly with a melancholy sound. We found it cold 
and unpleasant to stand waiting there, but we were 
furious with Tanya for having deserted us, her 
worshippers, for the sake of a common soldier, and 
we waited for her with the grim delight of exe- 
cutioners. 

After a while — we saw Tanya returning. Her eyes — 
yes, her eyes, actually sparkled with joy and happiness, 
and her lips — were smiling. And she was walking 
as if in a dream, rocking a little to and fro, with un- 
certain footsteps . . . 

We could not endure this calmly. The whole lot 
of us suddenly burst through the door, rushed into 
the yard, and hissed and yelled at her with evil, bestial 
violence. 

On perceiving us she trembled — and stood as if 
rooted in the mud beneath her feet. We surrounded 
her and, maliciously, without any circumlocution, we 
reviled her to our hearts’ content, and called her the 
most shameful things. 

We did not raise our voices, we took our time about 
it. We saw that she had nowhere to go, that she was 


TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER. 65 


in the midst of us, and we might vent our rage upon 
her as much as we liked. I don’t know why, but we 
did not beat her. She stood in the midst of us, and 
kept turning her head now hither, now thither, as 
she listened to our insults. And we — bespattered her, 
more and more violently, with the mud and the venom 
of our words. 

The colour quitted her face, her blue eyes, a minute 
before so radiant with happiness, opened widely, her 
bosom heaved heavily, and her lips trembled. 

And we, surrounding her, revenged ourselves upon 
her, for she had robbed us. She had belonged to us. 
we had expended our best upon her, and although 
that best was but a beggar’s crumb, yet we were six- 
and-twenty and she was but one, therefore we could 
not devise torments worthy of her fault. How we did 
abuse her! She was silent all along — all along she 
looked at us with the wild eyes of a hunted beast, 
she was all of a tremble. 

We ridiculed, we reviled, we baited her . . . 

Other people came running up to us . . . One of 

us plucked Tanya by the sleeve. 

Suddenly her eyes sparkled, she leisurely raised her 
hands to her head and, tidying her hair, looked straight 
into our faces, and cried loudly but calmly : 

“ Ugh ! you wretched prisoners ! ” 

And she walked straight up to us, walked as simply 
as if we were not standing there before her at all, 
as if we were not obstructing her way. And for that 

E 


66 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


very reason not one of us was actually standing in 
her way when she came up to us. 

And proceeding out of our midst and, without so 
much as turning towards us, loudly, and with in- 
describable contempt, she kept on saying : 

“ Ugh ! you wretches ! you vermin ! ” 

And — off she went. 

We remained standing in the yard, in the midst of 
the mud, beneath the pouring rain and the grey, sun- 
less sky. 

Presently we returned in silence to our grey, stony 
dungeon. As before, the sun never once looked 
through our window, and — there was no Tanya now. 


III. — ONE AUTUMN NIGHT. 


ONCE in the autumn I happened to be in a very 
unpleasant and inconvenient position. In the town 
where I had just arrived and where I knew not a 
soul, I found myself without a farthing in my pocket 
and without a night’s lodging. 

Having sold during the first few days every part 
of my costume, without which it was still possible to go 
about, I passed from the town into the quarter called 
“ Ysle,”* where were the steamship wharves — a quarter 
which during thel navigation season fermented with 
boisterous laborious life, but now was silent and 
deserted, and indeed we were in the last days of 
October. 

Dragging my feet along the moist sand, and 
obstinately scrutinising it with the desire to discover 
in it any sort of fragment of food, I wandered alone 
among the deserted buildings and warehouses, and 
thought how good it would be to get a fair bellyful. 



In our present state of culture hunger of the 


is more quickly satisfied than hunger of the body. 
You wander about the streets, you are surrounded 
by buildings not bad-looking from the outside and— 


* River’s mouth. 


68 


TALES' FROM GORKY. 


you may safely say it — not so badly furnished inside, 
and the sight of them may excite within you 
stimulating ideas about architecture, hygiene, and 
many other wise and high-flying subjects. You 
may meet warmly and neatly dressed folks — all 
very polite, and turning away from you tactfully, 
not wishing offensively to notice the lamentable 
fact of your existence. Well, well, the mind of a 
hungry man is always better nourished and healthier 
than the mind of the well-fed man — and there you 
have a situation from which you may draw a very 
ingenious conclusion in favour of the ill fed ! 

The evening was approaching, the rain was falling, 
and the wind blew violently from the north. It 
whistled in the empty booths and shops, blew into the 
plastered window-panes of the taverns, and whipped 
into a foam the wavelets of the river which splashed 
noisily on the sandy shore, casting high their white 
crests, racing one after another into the dim 
distance, and leaping impetuously over one another’s 
shoulders ... It seemed as if the river felt the 
proximity of winter, and was running at random away 
from the fetters of ice which the north wind might 
well have flung upon her that very night. The sky 
was heavy and dark, down from it swept incessantly 
scarcely visible drops of rain, and the melancholy elegy 
in nature all around me was emphasised by a couple 
of battered and misshapen willow-trees, and a boat, 
bottom upwards, that was fastened to their roots. 


ONE AUTUMN NIGHT. 


69 

The overturned canoe with its battered keel, and the 
old and miserable trees rifled by the cold wind . . . 
everything around me bankrupt, barren* and dead, 
and the sky flowing with undryable tears . . . 

everything around waste and gloomy ... it 
seemed as if everything were dead, leaving me alone 
among the living, and me also a cold death awaited. 

And I was then eighteen years old — a good time ! 

I walked and walked along the cold wet sand, 
making my chattering teeth warble in honour of cold 
and hunger, and suddenly, as I was carefully searching 
for something to eat behind one of the empty crates, 
I perceived behind it, crouching on the ground, a 
figure in woman’s clothes dank with the rain and 
clinging fast to her stooping shoulders. Standing over 
her, I watched to see what she was doing. It appeared 
that she was digging a trench in the sand with her 
hands, digging away under one of the crates. 

“ Why are you doing that ? ” I asked, crouching 
down on my heels quite close to her. 

She gave a little scream and was quickly on her 
legs again. Now that she stood there staring at me, 
with her wide-open grey eyes full of terror, I perceived 
that it was a girl of my own age, with a very pleasant 
face embellished unfortunately by three large blue 
marks. This spoilt her, although these blue marks had 
been distributed with a remarkable sense of proportion, 
one at a time, and all of equal size : two under the eyes, 
and one a little bigger on the forehead just over the 


7o 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


bridge of the nose. This symmetry was evidently 
the work of an artist well inured to the business of 
spoiling the human physiognomy. 

The girl looked at me, and the terror in her eyes 
gradually died out . . . She shook the sand from 

her hands, adjusted her cotton head-gear, cowered 
down, and said : 

“I suppose you too want something to eat? Dig 
away then ! — my hands are tired. Over there ” — she 
nodded her head in the direction of a booth — “ there 
is bread for certain . . . and sausages too . . . 

That booth is still carrying on business.” 

I began to dig. She, after waiting a little and 
looking at me, sat down beside me and began to help 
me. 

We worked in silence. I cannot say now whether 
I thought at that moment of the criminal code, of 
morality, of proprietorship, and all the other things 
about which, in the opinion of many experienced 
persons, one ought to think every moment of one’s 
life. Wishing to keep as close to the truth as possible, 
I must confess that apparently I was so deeply en- 
gaged in digging under the crate that I completely 
forgot about everything else except this one thing : 
what could be inside that crate. 

The evening drew on. The grey, mouldy, cold fog 
grew thicker and thicker around us. The waves 
roared with a hollower sound than before, and the 
rain pattered down on the boards of the crate 


ONE AUTUMN NIGHT. 


7 * 


more loudly and more frequently. Somewhere or 
other the night-watchman began springing his 
rattle. 

“ Has it got a bottom or not ? ” softly inquired my 
assistant. I did not understand what she was talking 
about, and I kept silence. 

“ I say, has the crate got a bottom, for if it has we 
shall vainly try to break into it. Here we are digging 
a trench, and we may, after all, come upon nothing 
but 9olid boards. How shall we take them off ? 
Better smash the lock — it is a wretched lock.” 

Good ideas rarely visit the heads of women, but, 
as you see, they do visit them sometimes. I have 
always valued good ideas, and have always tried to 
utilise them as far as possible. 

Having found the lock, I tugged at it and wrenched 
off the whole thing. My accomplice immediately 
stooped down and wriggled like a serpent into the 
gaping-open, four-cornered cover of the crate whence 
she called to me approvingly, sotto voce: 

“You’re a brick!” 

Nowadays a little crumb of praise from a woman 
is dearer to me than a whole dithyramb from a man, 
even though he be more eloquent than all the ancient 
and modern orators put together. Then, however, I 
was less amiably disposed than I am now, and, paying 
no attention to the compliment of my comrade, I asked 
her curtly and anxiously : 

“Is there anything? ” 


72 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


In a monotonous tone she set about calculating our 
discoveries. 

“A basketful of bottles— thick furs— a sunshade 
— an iron pail.” 

All this was uneatable. I felt that my hopes had 
vanished . . . But suddenly she exclaimed 

vivaciously : 

“Aha! here it is!” 

“ What?” 

“ Bread ... a loaf . . . it’s only wet 

. . . take it!” 

A loaf flew to my feet, and after it herself, my 
valiant comrade. I had already bitten off a morsel, 
stuffed it in my mouth, and was chewing it . . . 

“ Come, give me some too ! . . . And we mustn’t 

stay here . . . Where shall we go ? ” she looked 

inquiringly about on all sides ... It was dark, 
wet, and boisterous. 

“ Look ! there’s an upset canoe yonder ... let 
us go there.” 

“ Let us go then ! ” And off we set, demolishing 
our booty as we went, and filling our mouths with large 
portions of it . . . The rain grew more violent, 

the river roared ; from somewhere or other resounded 
a prolonged mocking whistle — just as if Someone great 
who feared nobody was whistling down all earthly 
institutions and along with them this horrid autumnal 
wind and us its heroes. This whistling made my 
heart throb painfully, in spite of which I greedily 


ONE AUTUMN NIGHT. 


73 


went on eating, in which respect the girl, walking on 
my left hand, kept even pace with me. 

“ What do they call you ? ” I asked her, why I know 
not. 

“ Natasha,” she answered shortly, munching loudly. 

I stared at her — my heart ached within me, and 
then I stared into the mist before me, and it seemed 
to me as if the inimical countenance of my Destiny 
was smiling at me enigmatically and coldly. 

* * * * * 

The rain scourged the timbers of the skiff in- 
cessantly, and its soft patter induced melancholy 
thoughts, and the wind whistled as it flew down into 
the boat’s battered bottom — through a rift, where 
some loose splinters of wood were rattling together — 
a disquieting and depressing sound. The waves of the 
river were splashing on the shore, and sounded so 
monotonous and hopeless, just as if they were telling 
something unbearably dull and heavy, which was boring 
them into utter disgust, something from which they 
wanted to run away and yet were obliged to talk about 
all the same. The sound of the rain blended with 
their splashing, and a long-drawn sigh seemed to be 
floating above the overturned skiff— the endless, labour- 
ing sigh of the earth, injured and exhausted by the 
eternal changes from the bright and warm summer to 
the cold misty and damp autumn. And the wind blew 
continually over the desolate shore and the foaming 
river — blew and sang its melancholy songs. . . 


74 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Our position beneath the shelter of the skiff was 
utterly devoid of comfort; it was narrow and damp, 
tiny cold drops of rain dribbled through the damaged 
bottom . . . gusts of wind penetrated it. We sat 

in silence and shivered with cold. I remember that I 
wanted to go to sleep. Natasha leaned her back 
against the hull of the boat and curled herself up into 
a tiny ball. Embracing her knees with her hands, 
and resting her chin upon them, she stared doggedly 
at the river with wide-open eyes ; on the pale patch 
of her face they seemed immense, because of the blue 
marks below them. She never moved, and this 
immobility and silence — I felt it — gradually produced 
within me a terror of my neighbour. I wanted to talk 
to her, but I knew not how to begin. 

It was she herself who spoke. 

“ What a cursed thing life is ! ” she exclaimed 
plainly, abstractedly, and in a tone of deep conviction. 

But this was no complaint. In these words there 
was too much of indifference for a complaint. This 
simple soul thought according to her understanding, 
thought and proceeded to form a certain conclusion 
which she expressed aloud, and which I could not 
confute for fear of contradicting myseilf. Therefore 
I was silent. And she, as if she had not noticed me, 
continued to sit there immovable. 

“ Even if we croaked . . . what then . 

Natasha began again, this time quietly and reflectively. 
And still there was not one note of complaint in her 


ONE AUTUMN NIGHT. 


75 


words. It was plain that this person, in the course of 
her reflections on life, was regarding her own case, 
and had arrived at the conviction that in order to 
preserve herself from the mockeries of life, she was 
not in a position to do anything else but simply 
“croak,” to use her own expression. 

The clearness of this line of thought was inex- 
pressibly sad and painful to me, and I felt that if I 
kept silence any longer I was really bound to weep. 

. . . And it would have been shameful to have 

done this before a woman, especially as she was not 
weeping herself. I resolved to speak to her. 

“ Who was it that knocked you about ? ” I asked. 
For the moment I could not think of anything more 
sensible or more delicate. 

“ Pashka did it all,” she answered in a dull and level 
tone. 

“ And who is he ? ” 

“ My lover. . . He was a baket.” 

“ Did he beat you often ? ” 

“ Whenever he was drunk he beat me. . . 

Often!” 

And suddenly, turning towards me, she began to 
talk about herself, Pashka, and their mutual relations. 
She was “ one of the street-walking girls who . . .” 

— and he was a baker with red moustaches and played 
very well on the banjo. He came to see her at “ the 
establishment,” and greatly pleased her, for he was a 
merry chap and wore nice clean clothes. He had an 


76 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


under-vest which cost fifteen roubles and boots with 
dress tops. For these reason she had fallen in love 
with him, and he became her “ creditor.” And when he 
became her creditor he made it his business to take 
away from her the money which thei other guests gave 
to her for bonbons, and getting drunk on this money 
would fall to beating her ; but that would have been 
nothing if he hadn’t also begun to “ run after ” other 
girls before her very eyes. 

“ Now, wasn’t that an insult? I am not worse than 
the others. Of course that meant that he was laugh- 
ing at me, the blackguard. The day before yesterday 
I asked leave of my mistress to go out for a bit, went 
to him, and there I found Dimka sitting beside him 
drunk. And he, too, was half seas over. I said to 
him: ‘You scoundrel, you!’ And he gave me a 
thorough hiding. And he kicked me and dragged 
me by the hair — and did everything. But that 
was nothing to what came after. But he spoiled 
everything I had on — left me just as I am now ! How 
could I appear before my mistress ? He spoiled every- 
thing . . . my dress and my jacket too — it was 

quite a new one — I gave a fiver for it . . . land 

tore my kerchief from my head. . . Oh, Lord! 

What will become of me now ! ” she suddenly whined 
in a lamentable overstrained voice. 

And the wind howled, and became ever colder and 
more boisterous. . . Again my teeth began to dance 

up and down. And she, too, huddled up to avoid 


ONE AUTUMN NIGHT. 


77 


the cold, pressing as closely to me as she could, so that 
I could see the gleam of her eyes through the dark- 
ness. 

“What wretches all you men are! I’d burn you 
all in an oven, I’d cut you in pieces. If anyone of 
you was dying I’d spit in his mouth, and not pity him 
a bit. Mean skunks. You wheedle and wheedle, you 
wag your tails like cringing dogs, and we fools give 
ourselves up to you, and it’s all up with us ! Immedi- 
ately you trample us underfoot. . . Miserable 

loafers ! ” 

She) cursed us up and down, but there was no 
vigour, no malice, no hatred of these “miserable 
loafers ” in her cursing that I could hear. The tone 
of her language by no means corresponded with its 
subject-matter, for it was calm enough, and the gamut 
of her voice was terribly poor. 

Yet all this made a stronger impression on me than 
the most eloquent and convincing pessimistic books 
and speeches, of which I had and have read not a few, 
both earlier and later, and still read to this day. And 
this, you see, was because the agony of a dying 
person is much more natural and violent than the 
most minute and picturesque descriptions of death. 

I felt really wretched, more from cold than from the 
words of my neighbour. I groaned softly and gnashed 
my teeth. 

And almost at the same moment I felt two little arms 
about me — one of them touched my neck and the other 


78 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


lay upon my face, and at the same time an anxious, 
gentle, friendly voice uttered the question : 

“ What ails thee ? ” 

I was ready to believe that someone was asking 
me this and not Natasha, who had just declared that 
all men were scoundrels, and expressing a wish for their 
destruction. But she it was, and now she began 
speaking quickly, hurriedly. 

“ What ails thee, eh? Art cold? Art frozen? Ah, 
what a one thou art, sitting there so silent like a little 
owl ! Why, thou shouldst have told me long ago that 
thou wert cold. Come ... lie on the ground 
. . . stretch thyself out and I will lie . . . 
there! how’s that? Now put your arms round me! 

. . . tighter ! How’s that ! thou shouldst be warm 

very soon now. . . And then we’ll lie back to back. 

. . . The night will pass so quickly, see if it won’t 

I say . . . hast thou too been drinking? . . . 
turned out of thy place, eh? ... It doesn’t 
matter.” 

And she comforted me . . She encouraged me. 

May I be thrice accursed ! What a world of irony 
was in this single fact for me ! Just imagine ! Here 
was I, seriously occupied at this very time with the 
destiny of humanity, thinking of the re-organization 
of the social system, of political revolutions, reading 
all sorts of devilishly-wise books whose abysmal pro- 
fundity was certainly unfathomable by their very 
authors — at this very time, I say, I was trying with all 


ONE AUTUMN NIGHT. 


79 


my might to make of myself “a potent active 
social force.” It even seemed to me that I had 
partially accomplished my object ; anyhow, at 
this time, in my ideas about myself I had got 
so far as to recognise that I had an exclusive 
right to exist, that I had the necessary greatness to 
deserve to live my life, and that I was fully competent 
to play a great historical part therein. And a venal 
woman was now warming me with her body, a 
wretched, battered, hunted creature, who had no place 
and no value in life, and whom I had never thought 
of helping till she helped me herself, and whom I really 
would not have known how to help in any way even 
if the thought of it had occurred to me. 

Ah ! I was relady to think that all this was happen- 
ing to me in a dream — in a disagreeable, an oppressive 
dream. 

But, ugh ! it was impossible for me to think that, for 
cold drops of rain were dripping down upon me, the 
woman was pressing close to me, her warm breath 
was fanning my face, and despite a slight bouquet 
of vodka it did me good. The wind howled and 
raged, the rain smote upon the skiff, the waves 
splashed, and both of us, embracing each other con- 
vulsively, nevertheless shivered with cold. All this 
was only too real, and I am certain that nobody ever 
dreamed such an oppressive and horrid dream as that 
reality. 

But Natasha was talking all the time of something 


8o 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


or other, talking so kindly and sympathetically, as only 
women can talk. Beneath the influence of her voice 
and kindly words a little fire began to burn up within 
me, and something inside my heart thawed in con- 
sequence. 

Then tears poured from my eyes like a hailstorm, 
washing away from my heart much that was evil, much 
that was stupid, much sorrow and dirt which had 
fastened upon it before that night. Natasha, too, en- 
couraged me : 

“ Come, come, that will do, little one ! Don’t take on ! 
That’ll do! God will give thee another chance 
. . . thou wilt right thyself and stand in thy proper 

place again . . . and it will be all right. . .” 

And she kept kissing me . . . many kisses did 

she give me . . . burning kisses . . . and all 

for nothing . . . 

Those were the first kisses from a woman that had 
ever been bestowed upon me, and they were the best 
kisses too, for all the subsequent kisses cost me fright- 
fully dear, and really gave me nothing at all in 
exchange. 

“ Come, don’t take on so, funny one ! I’ll manage 
for thee to-morrow if thou canst not find a place” — and 
her quiet persuasive whispering sounded in my ears 
as if it came through a dream. . . 

There we lay till dawn. . . 

And when the dawn came, we crept from behind 
the skiff and went into the town. . . . Then we 


ONE AUTUMN NIGHT. 


81 


took friendly leave of each other and never met again, 
although for half a year I searched for that kind 
Natasha, with whom I spent the autumn night just 
described by me, in every hole and corner . . . 

If she be already dead — and well for her if it were 
so! — may she rest in peace! And if she be alive 
. . . still I say : peace to her soul ! And may the 

consciousness of her fall never enter her soul . . . 

for that would be a superfluous and fruitless suffering 
if life is to be lived . . . 


F 


IV.— A ROLLING STONE. 


I. 


I MEET HIM. 

Stumbling in the dark upon the hurdle fence I 
valiantly strided over puddles of mud from window 
to window, tapped, not very loudly, on the window- 
panes with my fingers, and cried : 

“ Give a traveller a night’s lodging ! ” 

In reply they sent me to the neighbours or to the 
Devil ; from one window they promised to let the dog 
loose upon me, from another they threatened me 
silently but eloquently with their fists — and big fists 
too. A woman screamed at me. 

“ Go away, be off while you are still whole ! My 
husband is at home.” 

I understood her : she only took in lodgers during 
the absence of her husband . . . Regretting that 
he was at home I went on to the next window. 

“ Good people, give a traveller a night’s lodging ! ” 

They answered me politely : 

“ In God’s name go — further on ! ” 


A ROLLING STONE. 


83 


The weather was wretched — a fine, cold rain was 
falling, and the muddy earth was thickly enveloped 
in darkness. From time to time a gust of wind blew 
from some quarter or other ; it moaned softly in the 
branches of the trees, rustled the wet straw on the 
roofs, and gave birth to many other cheerless noises, 
breaking in upon the gloomy silence of the night with 
its miserable music of sighs and groans. Listening 
to this dolorous prelude to the grim poem which they 
call Autumn, the people under the roofs were no doubt 
in a bad humour, and therefore would not give me a 
night’s lodging. For a long time I had fought against 
this resolution of theirs, they as doggedly opposed me 
and, at last, had annihilated my hopes of a night’s 
lodging beneath any roof whatsoever. So I left the 
village and went forth into the fields, thinking that 
there, perhaps, I might find a haycock or a rick of 
straw . . . though naught but chance could 

direct me to them in this thick and heavy darkness. 

But lo and behold! I saw, three paces in front 
of me, something big rising up — something even darker 
than the darkness. I went thither, and discovered that 
it was a corn magazine. Corn magazines, you know, 
are built not right upon the earth but upon piles or 
stones ; between the floor of the magazine and the 
ground is a space where an ordinary man can easily 
settle down ... all he has to do is to lie upon 
his belly and wriggle into it 

Clearly, Destiny desired that I should pass that 


8 4 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


night not only under a roof but under a floor. Content 
therewith, I wriggled along the dry ground, feeling 
with my breast and sides for a somewhat more 
level place for my night’s lodging. And suddenly in 
the darkness resounded a calmly-anticipatory voice : 

“ A little more to the left, if you please ! ” 

This was not alarming, but unexpected it certainly 
was. 

“ Who’s there ? ” I inquired. 

“ A man . . with a stick . . .” 

“ I have a stick too.” , 

“ And matches ? ” 

“Yes, I have matches also.” 

“ That’s good.” 

I didn’t see anything at all good in this, for, accord- 
ing to my view of the matter, it would only have 
been good if I had had bread and tobacco and not 
merely matches. 

“ I suppose they wouldn’t let you have a night’s 
lodging in the village ? ” inquired the invisible voice. 

“ No, they wouldn’t,” I said. 

" Me also they would not admit.” 

This was clear — if only he had asked for a night’s 
lodging. But he might not have asked, he might 
simply have crept in here to await a favourable oppor- 
tunity for executing some sort of risky operation 
absolutely desiderating the protection of the night 
Every sort of labour is praiseworthy, I know, but for 
all that I resolved to clutch my stick firmly. 


A ROLLING STONE. 


85 


“ They wouldn’t let me in, the Devils ! ” resumed 
the voice. “ Blockheads ! In fine weather they let 
you in, while in weather like this . . . may they 
howl for it ! ” 

“And whither are you going?” I asked. 

“To . . . Nikolaiev. And you?” 

I told him. 

“Fellow-travellers that means. And now strike a 
match. I’m going to smoke.” 

The matches had got damp — impatiently, it took me 
a long time, I struck them against the boards above my 
head. At last a tiny little light spluttered forth, and 
from out of the darkness stared a pale face with a thick 
black beard. 

The big, sensible eyes looked at me with a smile, 
presently some white teeth gleamed from beneath 
the moustaches, and the man said to me : “ Like a 
smoke ? ” 

The match burnt out. We lit another, and by the 
light of it we stared once more at each other, after 
which my fellow lodger observed confidentially : 

“ Well, it seems to me we shan’t clash . . . take 

a cigarette.” 

Another cigarette was between his teeth and, 
brightening as he smoked it, illuminated his face 
with a faint reddish glimmer. Around his eyes and 
on the forehead of this man was a lot of deep and 
finely furrowed wrinkles. Earlier, by the light of the 
same match, I had observed that he was dressed in the 


86 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


remains of an old wadding paletot, girded with a piece 
of string, and on his feet were shoes made of a whole 
piece of leather — porshni as we call them on the Don. 

“ A pilgrim ? ” I asked. 

“ Yes, I go on foot. And you? ” 

“ Likewise.” 

He moved slightly, and there was a sort of metallic 
clank — evidently a kettle or tea-pot, that indispen- 
sable accessory of the pilgrim to holy places ; but in 
his tone there was not a trace of that foxy unction 
which always betrays the pilgrim ; in his tone there was 
nothing of the pilgrim’s obligatory thievish oiliness, 
and, so far, his words were unaccompanied by any 
pious groans or quotations from “ the Scriptures.” In 
general he did not at all resemble the professional 
loafers at the holy places — that shoddy and endless 
variety of “ Russian Vagabondage,” whose lies and 
superstitions have such an effect upon the spiritually- 
hungry and starving rural population. Besides* he 
was going to Nikolaiev, where there were neither 
shrines nor relics . . . 

“And where are you coming from? ” I inquired 

“From Astrakhan.” 

Now in Astrakhan also there are no relics. Then 
I asked him: 

“ Doesn’t that mean you are going from sea to sea 
and not to the holy places at all ? ” 

“ Nay, but I go to the holy places too. Why should 
I not go to the holy places? I go with pleasure 


A ROLLING STONE. 


87 


. . . they always feed you well there . . . 

especially if you get intimate with the monks. Our 
brother Isaac* is much respected by them, because he 
makes life a little leiss monotonous for them. What 
are your views on the subject ? ” 

I explained. 

“They are feeding-places,” he admitted. “And 
whither then do you go? Aha! you find the way 
is long, eh? Strike a match and we’ll smoke a little 
more. When one smokes one grows a little warmer.” 

It really was cold, not only because of the wind, 
which impudently blew right m upon us, but because 
of our wet clothes. 

“Perhaps you’d like something to eat? I have 
bread, potatoes, and two roasted ravens . . . 
have some?” 

“ Ravens ? ” I inquired inquisitively. 

“Never tasted them? They’re not bad . . .” 

He chucked me a large piece of bread. 

I didn’t try the raven. 

“Come, try them! In the autumn they’re capital. 
And after all it is much more pleasant to eat raven 
angled for by your own hands than bread or fat 
given to you by the hand of a neighbour out of the 
window of his house, which, after you have accepted 
it as an alms, you always want to burn.” 

His remarks were reasonable — reasonable and in- 
teresting. The use of raven as an article of food 


* Himself. 


88 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


was new to me but did not cause me any surprise. 

I knew that in winter at Odessa " the lower orders ” 
eat rats, and at Rostov — slugs. There was nothing 
improbable in it. Even the Parisians, when in a state 
of siege, were glad to eat all sorts of rubbish, and 
there are people who all their life long live in a state 
of siege. 

“ And how do you catch your ravens ? ” my desire 
for information led me to ask. 

“ Not with your mouth, anyhow. You can knock 
them down with a stick or a stone, but the surest way 
is to fish for them! You must tie a piece of fat meat 
or a bit of bread at the end of a long piece of cord. 
The raven seizes it, gulps it down, and you haul him 
in. Then you twist his neck, pluck him, draw him, 
and, fastening him on to a stick, roast him over a 
fire.” 

“ Ah ! it would be nice to be sitting by a fire now,” 
I sighed. 

The cold had become more sensible. It seemed 
as if the very wind were freezing, it beat against the 
walls of the magazine with such a painful tremulous 
whine. Sometimes it was wafted to us along with 
the howl of some dog, the crowing of a cock, and the 
melancholy sound of the bell of the village church, 
hidden in the darkness. Drops of rain fell heavily 
from the roof of the magazine on to the wet earth. 

“ ’Tis dull to be silent,” observed my fellow night- 
lodger. 


A ROLLING STONE. 


89 


“ It’s rather cold ... to talk,” I said. 

“ Put your tongue in your pocket ... it will 
warm it up.” 

“ Thanks for the hint ! ” 

“ We will go together, eh ? When we take the 
road I mean ... ? ” 

“ All right!” 

“ Let us introduce ourselves then ... I, for 
instance, am Pavel Ignat’ev Promtov, Esq.” 

- I introduced myself likewise. 

“ That’s right, now we know where we are ! And 
now I’ll ask you how you came to fall into these paths. 
Was it through a weakness for vodka, eh? ” 

“ It was from disgust of life.” 

“ That’s possible, too. Do you know that publi- 
cation of the Senate, entitled : Judicial Investiga- 
tions ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“Is your name also printed there ? ” 

At that time I had had nothing printed about me, 
and so I told him 

“ I also am not in print.” 

“ But have you done anything ? ” 

“ Everything is in God’s hands.” 

“ But you are a merry fellow, apparently ? ” 

“ What’s the good of grizzling ? ” 

“ Not everyone in your situation would talk like 
that ...” I doubted the sincerity of his words. 
“ The situation ... is damp and cold, but then 


9 o 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


you see it will be quite different at dawn of day. 
The sun will come out, and then we shall creep out 
of this, have some tea, eat and drink, and warm our- 
selves. That won’t be bad, eh?” 

“ Very good ! ” I admitted. 

“ So there, you see, every evil has its good side.” 

“ And every good thing its evil side.” 

“ Amen ! ” exclaimed Promtov with the voice of a 
deacon. 

God knows he was a merry comrade enough. I 
regretted that I could not see his face, which, judging 
from the rich intonation of his voice, must have shown 
a very expressive play of feature. We talked about 
trifles for a long time, concealing from each other our 
mutual desire to be more closely acquainted, and I 
was inwardly lost in admiration at the dexterity with 
which he inveigled me into blabbing about myself 
while he kept his own counsel. 

While we were quietly conversing the rain ceased, 
and the darkness began to melt away ; already in the 
East a rosy strip of dawn was glowing with a vivid 
radiance. Simultaneously with the dawn the fresh- 
ness of morning made itself felt — that freshness which 
is so stimulatingly pleasant when it meets a man 
dressed in warm and dry clothes. 

“I wonder if we could find anything here for a 
fire — dry twigs for instance ? ” inquired Promtov. 

Crawling on the floor we searched and searched, but 
could find nothing. Then we decided to drag out 


A ROLLING STONE. 


9 * 


one of the boards not very firmly fixed in its place. 
We pulled it out and converted it into firewood. After 
that Promtov proposed that we should, if possible, 
bore a hole in the floor of the magazine in order to 
get some rye grain — for if rye grain is boiled it makes 
a very good dish. I protested, observing that it was 
not proper — for thereby we should waste some hundred- 
weights of grain for the sake of a pound or two. 

" And what business is that of yours ? ” asked 
Promtov. 

“ I have heard that one must respect the property of 
others.” 

“ That, my dear boy, is only necessary when the 
property is your own . . . and it is only necessary 
then because your property is not other people’s 
property. . 

I was silent, but I reflected that this man must have 
extremely liberal views with regard to property, and 
that the pleasure of his acquaintance might, con- 
ceivably, have its drawbacks. 

Soon the sun appeared, bright and cheerful. Blue 
patches of sky looked out from the broken clouds 
which were sailing slowly and wearily towards the 
north. Drops of rain were sparkling everywhere. 
Promtov and I crept out of the magazine and entered 
the fields, amidst the bristles of the mown corn, towards 
the green crooked ribbon of a village far away from 
us. 

“ There’s a stream,” said my acquaintance. 


92 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


I looked at him, and thought that he must be about 
forty, and that life was no joke for him. His dark blue 
eyes, deeply sunken in their orbits, glistened calmly 
and confidently, and whenever he screwed them up a 
bit his face assumed a cunning and cruel expression. In 
his steady and combative gait, in the leather knapsack 
adroitly slung across his back, in his whole figure 
there could be detected the passion for a vagabond 
life, lupine experience and vulpine craft. 

“ We’ll go along together, then,” said he ; “ straight 
across the stream, five miles off, is the village of 
Mauzhelyeya, and from thence the straight road to 
New Prague. Around this little place live Stundists, 
Baptists, and other mystical muzhiks. . . They’ll 

feed us finely if we set about amusing them properly. 
But not a word about the Scriptures with them. They 
are at home, as it were, in the Scriptures. . .” 

We chose us a place not far from a group of poplars, 
selected some stones, numbers of which had been cast 
upon the shore by the little stream, all turbid with the 
rain, and on the stones laid our fire. Two versts away 
from us, on rising ground, stood the village, and on 
the straw of its roofs shone the rosy glow of dawn. 
The walls of the white huts were hidden by the sharp 
pyramids of the poplars coloured by the tints of 
autumn and the rising sun. The poplars were 
enveloped by the grey smoke from the chimneys, 
which darkened the orange and purple hues of the 
foliage and the patches of fresh blue sky between it. 


A ROLLING STONE. 


93 


I’m going to bathe,” observed Promtov ; n that is 
indispensable after so wretched a night. I advise you 
to do the same. And while we are refreshing our- 
selves the tea can be boiling. You know we ought to 
see to it that our nature should always be clean and 
fresh.” 

So saying he began to undress. His body was the 
body of a gentleman, beautifully shaped, with well- 
developed muscles. And when I saw him — naked, his 
dirty rags, which he had cast from him, seemed to me 
doubly filthy and disgusting — they had never seemed 
so bad till then. After ducking in the bubbling water 
of the stream we leaped upon the shore all tremulous 
and blue with cold, and hastily put on our clothes, 
which had been warming by the fire. Then we sat 
down by the fire to drink our tea, 

Promtov had an iron pipkin, he poured scalding 
tea into it, and handed it to me first. But the Devil, 
who is always ready to mock a man, seized me by one 
of the lying chords of my heart, and I observed 
magnanimously : 

“ Thank you, you drink first, I’ll wait.” 

I said this with the firm conviction that Promtov 
would infallibly vie with me in affability and polite- 
ness if I thus offered to surrender to him the first 
drink of tea, but he simply said : “ Very well, then ! ” 
— and put the pipkin to his mouth. 

I turned aside and began to gaze steadily at the 
desolate steppe, wishing to convince Promtov that I 


94 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


did not see how venomously his dark eyes were 
laughing at me. And he, while he sipped his tea, 
chewed his bread deliberately, smacked his lips with 
gusto, and did it all* with a deliberation that was torture 
to me. My vitals were already shivering with cold, 
and I was ready to pour the boiling water in the kettle 
down my throat. 

“ Well,” laughed Promtov, “ it’s not very profitable 
to do the polite, is it now ? ” 

“Alas, no!” I said 

“ Well, that’s all right! You’ll learn to know better 
in time. . . Why yield to another what is profitable 
or pleasant to yourself ? — that’s what I say. They say 
all men are brethren, yet nobody has ever attempted 
to prove it by any system of measurement . .” 

“ Is that really your opinion ? ” 

“ And why pray shouldn’t I speak as I think ? ” 

“ Well, you know that a man always tries to brag a 
little bit whatever he may be. . .” 

“ I know not why I should have inspired you with 
such a distrust of me,” and this wolf shrugged his 
shoulders — “ I suppose it is because I gave you some 
bread and tea? I did this not from any brotherly 
feeling, but out of curiosity. I see a man not in his 
proper place and I want to know how and by what 
means he was chucked out of life. . 

“ And I, too, wanted to know the same thing. Tell 
me who and what you are ? ” I asked. 

He looked searchingly at me and said, after a 


A ROLLING STONE. 


95 


moment’s silence : “ A man never knows exactly who 
he is. One must be always asking him what he takes 
himself for.” 

“ Weill, take it like that.” 

“Well ... I think I am a man who has 
no room in life. Life is narrow and I — am broad. 
Possibly this may not be true. But in this world there 
is a peculiar sort of people who must be descendants 
of the Wandering Jew. Their peculiarity is that they 
can never find a place for themselves in the world to 
which they can stick fast. Inside them lives an unruly 
aching desire for something new. The small fry of 
this order of men are never able to work things out to 
their liking, and for that reason are always dis- 
contented and unhappy, while the big fish are never 
satisfied with anything — whether it be women, money, 
or honour. Such people are not beloved in this life — 
they are audacious and unendurable. You see, the 
majority of people are sixpences in current coin, and 
all the difference between them is the date when they 
were struck off. This one is worn out, that one is 
quite new ; but their value is the same, their substance 
is of the same sort, and in every respect they are 
absolutely similar. Now I am not of these sixpences 
. . . although perhaps I may be a half-sovereign. 

. . . That is all.” 

He said all this smiling sceptically, and it seemed to 
me that he did not believe himself. But he excited 
in me an eager curiosity, and I resolved to go with him 


9 6 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


till I discovered who he was. It was plain that he was 
a so-called “ intelligent person.” There are many of 
them among the vagabonds, but they are all — dead 
people, people who have lost all self-respect, who lack 
the capacity of esteeming themselves, and only 
manage to live by falling lower every day into filth 
and nastiness ; finally, they dissolve in it and dis- 
appear from life. 

But there was something substantial and durable 
about Promt ov. And he did not grumble at life as 
all the others do. 

“ Well, shall we go on? ” he proposed. 

“ By all means.” 

We rose from the ground warmed by tea and sun- 
shine, and descended the bank to the current of the 
stream. 

“And how do you manage to get food?” I asked 
Promtov , . . “ do you work ? ” 

“ Wo-o-rk? No, I am no great lover of that.” 

“ But how then do you manage ? ” 

“ You shall see.” 

He was silent. Presently, after walking a few steps, * 
he began whistling through his teeth some merry song. 
His eyes keenly and confidently swept the steppe, and 
he walked firmly like a man sure of his object 

I looked at him, and the desire to know with whom 
I had to deal burnt still more strongly within me. 

The steppe surrounded us, desolate and quiet ; above 
us shone the friendly sun of the south ; we breathed 


A ROLLING STONE. 


97 


with all our lungs the pure stimulating air, and went 
along in the direction where fragments of clouds 
jostled one another in a chaos of shapes and colours. 

When we came to the street of the village — a little 
dog from somewhere or other bounded under our very 
feet, and barking loudly began to turn round and 
round us. Every time we looked at her, she bounded 
to one side, like a ball, with a terrified yelp, and again 
fell upon us barking furiously. Some of her friends 
then ran out, but they did not distinguish themselves 
by equal zeal, for after giving a bark or two they! 
retired to some hiding-place. Their indifference 
seemed, however, to excite still more our little reddish 
doggie. 

“ Do you see what a mean nature that dog has ? ” 
observed Promtov, shaking his head at the zealous 
little dog. " And it is all lies too. She knows very 
well that barking is not necessary here, and she is not 
spiteful — she is a coward, and only wants to show off 
before her master. The little devil is purely human, 
and without doubt she has been educated into it 
. . . People spoil their beasts. The time will soon 

come when beasts will be as abject and insincere as 
you and me . . ” 

“ Thank you,” I said. 

" Don’t mention it. However, now I must take 
aim.” 

His expressive countenance now put on a pitiful 
mien, his eyes grew foolish, he became all bent and 

G 


9 8 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


crooked, and his rags stood up straight like the fins 
of a chub. 

“ We must turn to our neighbour and ask for bread,” 
he said by way of explaining to me his transformation, 
and he began to look keenly at the windows of the 
cottages. At the window of one of the cottages stood 
a woman suckling a child. Promtov did obeisance to 
her, and said in a supplicating tone : 

" My sister, give bread to pilgrim folk ! ” 

“ Be not angry ! ” replied the woman, measuring us 
with suspicious eyes. 

“ May your breasts grow dry, then, daughter of a 
dog ! ” was the valediction my fellow-traveller sourly 
threw her. 

The woman screamed like one who has been stung, 
and rushed out to us. 

“ Oh, you, you . . .” she began. 

Promtov, without moving from the spot, looked her 
straight in the face with his black eyes, and their 
expression was savage and malevolent . . . The 

woman grew pale, trembled, and murmuring some- 
thing, quickly entered the hut. 

“ Let us go,” I proposed to Promtov. 

“ No, we’ll wait till she brings out the bread.” 

“ She’ll bring out the men upon us with pitchforks.” 

“ A lot you know ! ” observed this wolf with a 
sceptical smile. 

He was right The woman appeared before us, 
holding in her hands half a loaf of bread and a solid 


A ROLLING STONE. 


99 


bit of fat. Bowing low and silently to Promtov, she 
said to him with the tone of a suppliant : 

“ Pray take it, oh, man of God ! be not angry ! " 

M God deliver thee from the evil eye, from sorcery, 
and from the ague ! ” was the unctuous farewell with 
which Promtov parted from her, and so we went on 
our way. 

“ Listen now ! ” said I, when we were already a 
good way from the cottage, “ what an odd way of 
begging alms you have — to say no more." 

“ It’s the best way. If you fix your eyes upon the 
woman for a little, she takes you for a sorcerer, grows 
scared, and will not only give you bread but the whole 
concern if necessary. Why should I beg and pray 
and lower myself before her when I can command? 
I have always thought that it is better to take than to 
beg . . . but if you cannot take, you must beg, 

I suppose . . 

“ And has it never happened that instead of bread 
you sometimes . . .” 

“Got one for myself, eh? No. Trust to me for 
that! My dear brother, let me tell you that I have 
got a magic little bit of paper, and I’ve only got to 
show it to a muzhik* and he is instantly my slave. 
Would you like me to show it to you ? ” 

I held in my hands a pretty dirty and crumpled 
piece of paper, and perceived that it was a transit 


* Peasant. 


100 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


certificate issued to Pavel Ignat’ev Promtov by the 
administrative authorities of Petersburg, permitting 
him to journey from Astrakhan to Nikolaiev. The 
paper bore the seal of the Astrakhan police-office, 
with the corresponding signatures — all quite regular. 

“ I don’t understand,” I said, returning this docu- 
ment into the hands of its proprietor. “ How is it 
you are starting from Astrakhan, when your point 
of departure was St. Petersburg?” 

He smiled, his whole face expressed the conscious- 
ness of his superiority over me. 

“ Look now, it’s quite simple. Think it out. They 
sent me from Petersburg, and in sending me invited 
me to choose, for certain reasons, my place of resi- 
dence. Say I choose Kursk, for example. Well, I 
appear at Kursk, and go to the police-station. I have 
the honour to present myself there. The Kursk police 
cannot welcome me amiably — they have their own 
little brothers there — and are full up. They assume 
that they have before them a sharper, and a clever 
sharper too; if they cannot rid themselves of him 
forcibly with the assistance of the statutes, they must 
have recourse to administrative measures in order to 
get shot of him. And they are always glad to send 
me packing — even if they plunge me into fresh misery. 
Perceiving their embarrassment I humanely come to 
their assistance. Well, well, I say, I had already 
chosen my place of residence, but perhaps you would 
like me to choose it over again? They are only too 


A ROLLING STONE. 


IOI 


glad to get quit of me. I say, too, that I am ready to 
withdraw myself from the sphere of their duty, which 
is to preserve the inviolability of person and property, 
but as a reward for my amiability they must give me 
some provision for the road. They give me five roubles 
or ten, a little more or less, as the case may be, having 
regard to my temperament and character — and they 
always give gladly. It is always better to lose a fiver 
than to saddle themselves with grave inconvenience 
in my person — isn’t it?” 

“ Possibly,” I said. 

“ It is really so. And they provide me besides with 
a little piece of paper in no way resembling a pass- 
port. It is in its difference from a passport that the 
magic power of this little piece of paper consists. 
On it is written, ‘ ad-min-is-tra-tive-ly sent from 
Pet-ers-burg ! ’ Oh ! I show this to the starosta* who, 
generally, is as dull as a clod, and devil a bit of it 
does he understand. He fears it — there is a seal upon 
it. I say to him — on the strength of this bit of paper 
— you are bound to give me a night’s lodging! He 
gives it to me. You are bound to feed me! He 
feeds me. He cannot do otherwise, for on the paper 
is inscribed— from St. Petersburg administratively. 
What’s the meaning of this ‘ administratively ’ ? — the 
deuce only knows. It may mean : sent on a secret 
mission for investigating the condition of the coast 
industries, or inquiring as to the issue of false coin, or 
* Village elder. 


102 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


preventing illicit distilling, or carrying out the sale of 
contraband goods. Or it may imply an inquiry 
whether the people properly attend the services of 
the Orthodox Church as prescribed Or possibly it 
has something to do with the land Who can decide 
what ‘administratively from Petersburg’ means? 
Possibly I may be someone in disguise. The muzhik 
is stupid, what can he understand ? ” 

“ Yes, he does not understand much,” I observed 

“ And a very good thing too ! ” declared Promtov 
with lively satisfaction. “ Such he is and ought to 
be, and such as he is, and only so, he is indispensable 
to us all like the very air. For what is the muzhik? 
The muzhik is for us all the means of nutriment, that 
is to say, he is an edible creature. Look at me for 
instance ! Would it be possible far me to exist upon 
this earth but for the muzhik? Four things are in- 
dispensable for the existence of man : the sun, water, 
air, and the muzhik. 

“And the land?” 

“ Granted the muzhik — and you have the land as 
well. You have but to command him. Hie, you 
there ! create the land, and there the land will be. He 
cannot disobey.” 

This merry vagrant loved talking! We had long 
since passed the village, left behind us many farms, 
and once more another village stood before us, sub- 
merged in the orange foliage of autumn. Promtov 
chattered on — as merrily as a finch — and I listened 


A ROLLING STONE. 


™3 

to him, and thought about the muzhik and this new 
kind of parasite, unknown to me before, participating 
in the illusory prosperity of the muzhik. . . When 
will the muzhik be well repaid for all the evil with 
which he has been so liberally requited ? Here, along- 
side of me, marched the product of town life — a cynical 
and sensible vagrant, living on the vital juices of this 
poor muzhik, a wolf fully conscious of his lupine 
strength. 

“ Listen now ” — a circumstance had suddenly 
occurred to me — “we meet under conditions which 
induce me strongly to doubt the efficacy of your 
bit of paper — how do you explain it ? ” 

“ Aye, aye ! ” laughed Promtov, “ very simply. I 
had already passed through that place, and it is not 
always convenient to bring yourself back to people’s 
recollection as you know.” 

His candour pleased me. Candour is always a good 
quality, and it is a great pity that it is so rarely to be 
met with among respectable people. And I listened 
attentively to the random chatter of my comrade, trying 
to make up my mind whether the picture he drew of 
himself was the real one. 

“ Here is a village in front of us! If you like I will 
show you the power of my bit of paper — what do you 
say ? ” proposed Promtov. 

I objected to the experiment, proposing instead that 
he should tell me how he had really earned this piece 
of paper. 


104 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ Well, that is a long, long story/’ said he, waving 
his hand. “ But I’ll tell you — one day. Meantime let 
us rest and have a snack. We have) an ample store 
of food, which means that it is not necessary at present 
to go into the village and trouble our neighbour.” 

Quitting the road, we sat down on the ground and 
began to eat. Then, made lazy by the warm beams 
of the sun and the breath of the soft wind of the 
steppe, we lay down and slept. . . When we 

awoke, the sun purple and large was already on the 
horizon, and on the steppe the mists of the southern 
evening were encamping. 

“ Now you shall see,” declared Promtov. “ Fate is 
content that we should pass the night in that little 
village.” 

“ Let us go while there is still light,” I proposed. 

“ Don’t be afraid To-night we shall have a roof 
above our heads.” 

He was right. At the first hut at which we knocked 
and asked for a night’s lodging we were hospitably 
invited to come in. 

The “ guid man ” of the hut, a big, good-natured 
fellow, had just come in from the fields where he had 
been ploughing, his “ guid wife ” was making supper 
ready. Four grimy little children, huddled into a heap 
in a corner of the room, peeped out at us from thence 
with timid, inquisitive eyes. The buxom housewife 
bustled about from the hut to the outhouse swiftly and 
silently, bringing bread and water-melons and milk. 


A ROLLING STONE. 


io 5 

The master of the house sat down on a bench opposite 
to us rubbing his stomach with an air of concentration, 
and fixing penetrating glances upon us. Presently 
the usual question came from him : 

“ Where are you going ? ” 

“We’re going, dear man, from sea to sea, to the 
city of Kiev,” replied Promtov cheerfully in the words 
of the old cradle song. 

“ What is there to be seen at Kiev ? ” inquired the 
“ guid man ” meditatively. 

“ The holy relics.” 

The “ guid man ” looked at Promtov in silence and 
spat. Then after a pause he asked : 

“ And from whence do you come ? ” 

" I from Petersburg, he from Moscow,” answered 
Promtov. 

“ All that way ? ” — the “ guid man ” raised his brows. 
“And what’s Petersburg like? Folks say that it is 
built upon the sea and that it is often under water.”* 

Here the door opened and two other khokhli\ came 
in. 

“ We want a word with you, Michael,” said one of 
them. 

“ What have you got to say to me?” 

“ It’s this — who are these people ? ” 

* The peasant uses the Ruthenian dialect, the effect of which is lost 
in a translation. 

f “Tuft-headed,” the name given to the Little Russians by the 
Great Russians, from their mode of wearing their hair. 


io 6 TALES FROM GORKY. 

" These ? ” asked our host, nodding his head at us. 

" Yes.” 

Our host was silent and thoughtful, ho scratched 
his head a bit. 

w I should like to know myself,” he explained. 

" Maybe you are pilgrims ? ” they inquired of us. 

" Yes ! ” replied Promt ov. 

A long silence prevailed, in the course of which the 
three khokhli regarded us doggedly, suspiciously, and 
inquisitively. At last they all sat down to table and 
began, with loud crunching, to consume the crimson 
water-melons. 

" Maybe one of you is a scholar ? ” said one of the 
khokhli , turning towards Promtov. 

*' Both ! ” curtly replied Promtov. 

" Then perchance you know what a man ought to 
do when his backbone smarts and itches to that degree 
that he cannot sleep o’ nights? ” 

“ We do know,” replied Promtov. 

“ What?” 

Promtov went on chewing his bread for a long time, 
dried his hands on his rags, then pensively regarded 
the ceiling and, at last, observed decisively and even 
severely : 

“ Break up a loaf and get your old woman at night 
to rub your spine with the crummy part, and afterwards 
anoint it with hemp-oil and fat . . . that’s all ! ” 

“ What will come of it ? ” inquired the khokhol * 


Singular of khokhli. 


A ROLLING STONE. 


107 


“ Nothing,” and Promtov shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Nothing ” 

H Why should anything come of it? ” 

” Yet it’s a good remedy? ” 

" Yes, it’s a good remedy.” 

“I’ll try it. Thanks!” 

“To your good health!” said Promtov perfectly 
seriously. 

There was a long silence amidst the crunching of 
the water-melons and the whispering of the children. 

“ Hark ye,” began the owner of the hut, “ maybe 
you have heard all about it at Moscow — I mean 
about Siberia — is it possible to settle there or not? 
Our district magistrate said — but no doubt he lies — 
that it is quite impossible ! ” 

“ Impossible ! ” observed Promtov with an air of 
astonishment. 

The khokhli glanced at each other, and the master 
of the house murmured in his beard : “ May a toad 
crawl into his stomach ! ” 

“ Impossible ! ” repeated Promtov, and suddenly his 
face glowed with enthusiasm ; “ it is impossible, but 
why go to Siberia at all when there is so much land 
everywhere — as much as you please ? ” 

“ Well, truly there’s enough for the dead and to 
spare — but it is the living who stand in need of it,” 
remarked one of the khokhli sadly. 

“ In Petersburg it has been decided,” continued 
Promtov triumphantly, “ to take all the land belonging 


108 TALES FROM GORKY. 

to the gentry and the peasantry and make crown 
property of it.” 

The khokhli looked at him with wild wide-open 
eyes and were silent. Promtov regarded them 
severely and asked : 

“ Yes, make crown property of it — and do you know 
why?” 

The silence assumed an intense character, and the 
poor khokhli , apparently, were almost bursting with 
anxiety and expectation. I looked at them, and 
was scarce able to restrain the anger excited in me 
by the practical joke which Promtov was thus making 
at the poor creatures’ expense. But to have betrayed 
his audacious falsehood to them would have meant a 
whacking for him, so I held my peace, overwhelmed 
by this foolish dilemma. 

“ Speak out, good man, and tell us ! ” asked one of 
the khokhli quietly and timidly, with a stifled voice. 

“They are going to take away the land in order 
to redistribute it more fairly among the peasants. It 
has been decided there ” — here Promtov waved his 
hand vaguely to one side — “ that the true owner of 
the land is the peasant, and so it has been ordered 
that there shall be no emigration to Siberia, but people 
are to wait till the land is divided. . .” 

One of the khokhli let his slice of melon fall out of 
his mouth in his excitement. All of them looked 
intently at Promtov’s mouth with greedy eyes and 
were silent, being much impressed by the strange in- 


A ROLLING STONE. 


109 


telligence. And then — a few seconds afterwards — 
four expressions were heard almost simultaneously: 

“ Most holy mother ! ” — from the woman almost 
hysterically. 

“ But . . . maybe you are lying ! ” 

“Nay, but tell us more, good man!” 

“ Ah, that’s why we have had such bright dawns 
and sunsets ! ” exclaimed the khokhol whose back- 
bone had ached, with conviction. 

“ It is only a rumour,” said I. “ No doubt all this 
sounds very much like falsehood. . ” 

Promtov regarded me with genuine amazement and 
exclaimed fiercely : 

“ What rumour ? What lies ? What do you mean ? ” 

And there poured from his lips the melody of a 
most audacious falsehood — sweet music for all who were 
listening to him except myself. He liked the fun of 
spinning yarns. The khokhli , whom he wanted to 
persuade, were ready to jump into his mouth. But it 
was abominable to me to listen to his inspired false- 
hoods, which might very well result in bringing down 
a great misfortune upon the heads of these simple- 
minded folks. I left the hut and lay down in the 
courtyard thinking how best I could spoil the villainous 
game of my travelling-companion. His voice sounded 
for a long time in my ears, and then I fell asleep. 

I was awakened by Promtov at sunrise. 

“ Get up ! Let’s be off ! ” he said. 

Beside him stood the sleepy master of the hut, and 


IIO 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


the knapsack of Promtov was bulging out on all sides. 
We took our leave and departed. Promtov was 
merry. He sang, he whistled, and cast ironical side- 
long glances at me. I was thinking what I should say 
to him and walked by his side in silence. 

“Well! why don’t you crucify me?” he suddenly 
asked. 

“ And are you aware of what will follow from all 
this ? ” I drily inquired. 

“ Why, of course ! I understand you, and I know 
that you ought to turn the jest against me. I’ll even 
tell you how you’ll do it Would you like to hear? 
But better far — chuck it! What harm is there in 
putting ideas into the heads of these muzhiks ? They 
will be none the wiser for it And, besides, I’ve played 
my game well. Look how they’ve stuffed my knapsack 
for me ! ” 

“ But you may bring them under the stick ! ” 

“ Scarcely. . . And what if I did ? What have 
I to do with other folks’ backs. God grant w'e may 
keep our own backs whole, that’s all ! That’s not 
moral I know, but what do I care whether a thing is 
moral or not moral You’ll agree that that’s nobody’s 
business.” 

“ Come,” thought I, “ the wolfs about right” 

“Assume that they do suffer through my fault — 
I suppose the sky will still be blue and the sea salt.” 

“ But axe you not sorry ? ” 

“ Not a bit . . I am a rolling stone, and every- 


A ROLLING STONE. 


in 


thing which the wind casts beneath my feet wounds 
me in the side:” 

He was serious and intensely wrathful, and his eyes 
gleamed vindictively. 

" I always do like that and sometimes worse. Once 
I recommended a muzhik to drink constantly olive oil 
mixed with blackbeetles for a pain in the stomach, 
because he was a skin-flint. Not a little evil of a 
humorous sort have I wrought during my earthly 
pilgrimage. How many stupid superstitions and 
mystifications have I not introduced into the spiritual 
parts of the muzhik? . . And in general I am 

never very particular. Why should I be? For the 
sake of a few statutes, eh? Are there not other laws 
within myself ? This, my confession of faith, has also 
the sanction of John Chrysostom, who says: ‘the 
true Shekina — is man.’ ” 

“ But why boast of it ? ” 

M That is wrong, eh ? — from your point of view. But 
I, you see, am no great lover of gentlemanly points 
of view . . . and I assume that if people lift a 

stick to me it is my duty to respond with a stick and 
not with an obeisance.” 

As I listened to him I reflected that it would be well 
for me to recollect the first Psalm of King David, and 
depart from the way of this sinner. But then I 
wanted to know his history. 

I spent three more days with him, and during these 
three days I became convinced of much which I had 


112 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


previously only suspected. Thus, for example, it 
became quite clear to me in what manner various 
useless and ancient objects found their way into 
Promtov’s knapsack, such as the lower half of a copper 
candlestick, a chisel, a bit of lace, and a necklace. I 
understood that I was running the risk of a flogging 
and perhaps of falling into those places which finally 
receive collectors similar to Promtov. I should really 
have to part from him. But then, his story ! 

And lo! one day when the wind was howling 
savagely, knocking us off our legs, and we found 
ourselves in a haystack sheltering from the cold, 
Promtov told me the story of his life. 


II. 

THE STORY OF HIS LIFE. 

Well — then ! let us discourse for your profit and edifi- 
cation . . . I’ll begin with papa. My papa was 

a stem and conscientious man, just touching upon his 
sixtieth year, on half-pay, and he settled down in a 
little country town where he bought himself a little 
house. My mamma was a woman with a kind 
heart and generous blood . . . For me, at 
any rate, he had no respect For every trifle he 
made me kneel in a corner and lambed into 
me with a strap. But mamma loved me, and 


A ROLLING STONE. 


113 


it was pleasant to live with her. . . At the 

time papa moved into the little provincial town, 
I was in the sixth class of the Gymnasium, but I was 
expelled from it shortly afterwards for getting- mixed 
up with the teacher of physics. ... I ought to 
have taken my lessons in physics from this teacher, 
and I took them instead from the head master’s 
chambermaid. The head master was very angry 
with me for this, and drove me away to papa. I 
appeared before him, and explained that here I was 
expelled from the Temple of Learning because of a 
misunderstanding with the head master. But the 
head master had taken the precaution of informing 
my father of the whole affair by letter, so that the 
moment papa beheld me he began scolding me with 
all sorts of nasty words, and mamma did ditto. When 
they were tired of scolding me they resolved to send 
me away to Pskov, where papa had a brother living 
So they’re sending me to Pskov, I said to myself ; 
well, uncle is stupid and savage enough, but my dear 
little cousins are nice and kind, so life will be possible 
there anyhow. But even at Pskov it soon appeared 
that I had no friends at court, so to speak. In three 
months uncle turned me out, accusing me of immoral 
conduct, and having a bad influence on his daughters. 
Again I was scolded, and again I was banished, this 
time to the country, to the house of an aunt who 
lived in the Government of Ryazan. My auntie 
seemed to be a glorious and good-natured old lady, 

11 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


114 

who always had heaps of young people about her. 
But at that time everyone was infected by the foolish 
habit of reading forbidden books — and suddenly I 
found myself in gaol, where I suppose I must have 
remained three or four months. Mamma thereupon 
instructed me by letter that I had killed her; papa 
informed me that I had dishonoured him — what very 
tiresome parents it was my fate to have ! 

You know that if a man were free to choose his 
own parents it would be a much more convenient 
arrangement than the present order of things — now, 
wouldn’t it? Well, well! They let me out of prison, 
and I went to Nijni-Novgorod, where I had a married 
sister. But my sister appeared to be overwhelmed 
by family cares, and very ill-humoured on that account 
What was I to do? Just at the nick of time Mass 
was being celebrated, and I joined the choir of singers. 
My voice was good, I had a handsome exterior, they 
promoted me to the rank of solo-singer, and I sang 
all by myself. You imagine, I suppose, that I must 
have taken to drink on this occasion. No, even now 
I hardly ever drink vodka, only sometimes, and that 
very rarely — by way of warming myself. A drunkard 
I never was; of course I have had my fill when 
good wines were going — champagne for instance, and 
if you gave me Marsala, lots of it I mean, I should un- 
doubtedly get drunk upon it, for I love it as I love 
women. Women I love to frenzy — and perhaps I 
hate ’em too, for in the end I always feel an 


A ROLLING STONE. 


IJ 5 


irresistible desire to play them some dirty 
trick. . . Well, well! Why I feel so mad with 
them sometimes I do not know and cannot explain to 
myself. They have always been gracious to me^ for 
I was handsome and bold. But they’re such ties! 
Well, the deuce take them for what I care. I love 
to hear them cry and groan — for then I always think : 
Aha! now you are having your deserts. 

However, there was I singing away, I cared not what, 
so long as I had a merry life. Then, one day, I was 
suddenly accosted by a clean-shaven man who appeared 
before me and said : “ Have you ever tried acting on 
the stage ? ” Well, I had played a part in domestic 
spectacles. “ Would you like to earn twenty-five 
roubles* a month for playing light-comedy parts ? ” 
“ All right ! ” said I. So off we went to the town of 
Perm At Perm I played and sang in comic operas 
made up as a passionate dark young chap — with a 
past, the past of a political offender. The ladies 
were in raptures. Then I took the second lover roles. 
“ Try the heroic parts,” they said to me. So I played 
the part of Max in “Errant Fires,” and it went off 
capitally — I knew it. I played through a whole 
season. That summer our tour was a great success. 
We played at Vyatka, we played at Ufa, we even 
played at Elabuga. In the winter we returned to 
Perm. 


£2 1 os. 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


116 

And in that winter I felt a hatred and loathing 
of mankind You know how it is. You appear on 
the stage, and you see hundreds of fools and wretches 
with their eyes fixed full upon you — that slavish 
cowardly shudder (I know it so well) runs all down 
your back, and you have the prickly sensation of one 
who has sat down in an ant heap. They look upon 
you as their plaything, as a thing which they have 
purchased for their gratification for a single evening. 
They have the power to condemn or to approve. And 
there they sit waiting to see whether you will exert 
yourself with sufficient diligence to please them. And 
if they think that you have used sufficient diligence, 
they will bray — bray like tethered asses, and you must 
listen to them and feel content with their applause. 
For a time you will forget that you are their property 
. . . then, when you call it to mind, you will smite 

yourself upon the snout for having found pleasure in 
their approval. 

I hated this “ public ” to the verge of convulsions. 
Frequently I should have liked to have spat on them 
from the stage, to have rowed them with the vilest 
words. There were times when their eyes — you will 
feel with me — pricked my body like darning-needles ; 
and how greedily that “ public ” waits for you to tickle 
it— waits with the confidence of that lady land-owner 
whose serf-girls used to scratch the soles of her feet 
every evening. You are sensible of this expectation 
of theirs, and you think how pleasant it would be to 


A ROLLING STONE. 


117 

have in your hand a knife long enough to clean slice 
off all the noses of the first row of spectators at a 
single stroke. Devil take the whole lot of them ! 

But pardon me this outburst! I fear that for the 
moment I was becoming quite sentimental! — I only 
meant to say that I was a player, that I hated my 
public, and wanted to run away from it. In this I 
was assisted by the wife of a procurator. She did not 
please me and that did not please her. She set her 
husband in motion, and I suddenly appeared in the 
town of Saransk — just as if I were a grain of wheat 
whirled by the wind from the banks of the Kama. 
Ah, well! everything in this wretched life of ours is 
like a dream ! 

So I settled down in the town of Saransk, and 
there settled down along with me the young wife of 
a young Permiak of the mercantile persuasion. She 
was a determined character and dearly loved my art. 
So there we were together. We had no money, 
neither had we any acquaintances. Moreover, I was 
weary of her. She also, from sheer ennui, began to 
din it into me that I did not love her. At first I 
endured it patiently, but after a bit I could stand 
it no longer : “ Be off,” I cried ! “ leave me ! go to the 
devil ! ” That is exactly what I said to her. She 
caught up a revolver and fired it at me. The bullet 
lodged in my left shoulder — a little lower and I 
should have been in Paradise long ago. Anyhow, 
down I fell. But shei was frightened, and in her 
terror leaped into a well. 


n8 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


And there she soddened to death. 

Me they conducted to the hospital. Well, there 
of course ladies appeared upon the scene 
They revolved around me till I was able to stand on 
my legs again, and when I could do that I got the 
billet of secretary to the local police-station. Well, 
say what you will — to be associated with the police is 
more convenient than to be under police supervision. 
So there I lived for two or three months. . . 

It was in those days, for the first time in my life, that 
I had an attack of crushing, overwhelming ennui, that 
most horrible of all sensations to which humanity is 
liable. . . Everything around you ceases to be of 
interest, and you desire something new. You cast 
about hither and thither, you seek and seek, you find 
something, you seize it, and immediately you discover 
it is not what you wanted. You feel yourself led 
captive by something dark, you feel yourself fettered 
within, you feel yourself incapable of living in the 
world with yourself, and yet this world is more necessary 
to a man than everything else. A wretched condition 
of things! 

And it brought me at last to such a pass that I 
married. Such a step in a man of my character is 
only possible in case of anguish or drunkard’s head- 
ache. 

My wife was the daughter of a priest, who lived 
with her mother — her father was dead — and had the 
free disposition of her property. She had her own 


A ROLLING STONE. 


119 

house, you might even say mansion, and she had 
money besides. She was a handsome girl, no fool, 
and of a lively disposition, but she was very fond of 
reading books, and this had a very bad effect both 
upon me and her. She was constantly fishing for rules 
of life in all sorts of little books, and whenever she got 
what she wanted, she immediately proceeded to apply 
it personally to us both. Now, from my tenderest 
years morality was a thing I never could endure. . . 

At first I laughed at my wife, but afterwards it became 
tiresome to listen to heir. I saw that she always made 
a great show of ideas extracted from various little 
books, and bookish lore is about as suitable for a 
woman as his masters cast-off costume is for a lackey. 
We began to quarrel. . . Then I made the 

acquaintance of a certain priest — there was one of 
that sort there — a rogue who could play the guitar 
and sing, dance the trepak* to admiration, and take 
his skinful like a man. To my mind he was the best 
fellow in the town, because one could always live a 
jolly life in his company, and she — that is my wife — 
was always running him down, and always tried to 
drag me into the company of the Scribes and Pharisees 
who surrounded her. For in the evenings all the 
serious and best people in the town, as she called 
them, used to assemble at her house ; and serious 
enough they all were, as serious, to my mind, as 


* A boisterous national dance of Russia. 


120 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


gallows-birds. . . I also loved reading in those 

days, but I never used to trouble myself about what I 
read, and I don’t understand why people should. But 
they — I mean my wife and those who were with her — 
whenever they had read through a book, immediately 
became as restless as if they had hundreds of prickles 
beneath their skin. Now, I look upon it like this. 
Here’s a book. Very well! An interesting book. 
So much the better. But every book has been written 
by a man, and a man cannot leap higher than his own 
head. All books are written with one object : they 
want to prove that good is good and bad is bad, and 
it’s all one whether you have read a hundred of them 
or a thousand. My wife discussed her little books 
by the dozen, so that I began to tell her straight out 
that I should have had a better time of it if I had 
married the parson instead of her. It was only the 
parson who saved me from boredom, and but for him 
I should have bolted from my wife there and then. 
As soon as the Pharisees called upon her — off I went 
to the parson. In this way I lived through a year and 
a half. From sheer boredom I helped the parson in 
the church services. At one time I read the epistles, 
at another I stood in the choir and sang : 

“ From my youth up many passions have fought against me.” 

I went through a good deal in those days, and I 
shall be justified for many things at the Last Day for 
this endurance. But now my parson was joined by a 


A ROLLING STONE. 


I 2 I 


young kinswoman, and this woman came to him first 
because he was a widower, and in the second place 
because his swine had eaten him, i.e., had not eaten 
him entirely, but spoilt the look of him. He had, you 
must know, fallen down drunk in the yard and gone 
to sleep, and the swine had come into the courtyard 
and nibbled away at his ears* cheeks, and neck. It 
is notorious that swine eat all sorts of garbage. This 
diminution of his person threw my parson into a 
fever, and caused him to summon his kinswoman that 
she might cherish him and I might cherish her. Well, 
she and I set about the business very zealously, and 
with great success. But my wife found out how the 
land lay — found out I say, and at last it came to a 
quarrel. What was I to do ? I gave her as good as I 
got. Then she said to me : “ Leave my house ! ” Well, 
I thought the matter well over, and I quietly went away 
— right away from the town. Thus the bonds of my 
marriage were unloosed. If my consort is still alive 
she certainly regards me as happily de^d to her. I 
have never felt the slightest desire to see her again. 
I also think that it is well for her to forget me. May 
she live in peace ! Greatly did she bore me in those 
days. 

So now behold me a free man again, living in the 
town of Penza ! I came to loggerheads with the 
police ; no place could be found for me here or there — 
no place anywhere in fact. At last I became a psalm- 
singer in the church. I took up the office and sang 


122 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


and read. In the church I had again a “ public ” 
before me, and again a loathing of it arose within me. 
I was a miserable labourer in a dependent position. 
It was horrible to me. But a merchant’s wife was my 
salvation. She was a stout, God-fearing- woman, and 
had a very dull time of it. And she goes and gets 
enamoured of me by way of spiritual edification. So 
I got into the habit of going to see her, and she fed 
me. Her husband lived at home and was a little 
dotty, so she had to manage the whole plaguy business. 
I went to her very courteously, and I said to her : “ It is 
hard for me to be paying visits here, Sekleteya 
Kirillovna, precious hard,” I said ; “why don’t you make 
me your assistant ? ” She made some bones about it 
at first, and said I was much mistaken, but at last she 
took me as her manager. And now I had a good time 
of it, but the town itself was a filthy hole. There was 
no theatre, no decent hotel, no interesting people. Of 
course I was bored to death, and in the midst of my 
boredom I wrote a letter to my uncle. During my 
five years’ absence from Petersburg I had, of course, 
become very knowing. So I wrote now requesting for- 
giveness for all that I had done, promised never to do 
anything like it any more, and asked, among other 
things, whether it was not possible for me to live at 
Petersburg. My uncle wrote it was possible, but I 
must be careful. Then I broke with the merchant’s 
wife. 

You must know that she was stupid, fat, stodgy, and 


A ROLLING STONE. 


123 


ugly. I had had mistresses of great repute, elegant and 
sensible gossips every one of them. Very well! Yet 
with all my other mistresses I had parted scurvily; 
either I had driven them away with wrath and con- 
tumely, or they had played me some nasty trick or 
other. But this Sekleteya had inspired me with 
respect by reason of her very simplicity. 

“Farewell,” I said to her; “farewell, my dearly- 
beloved ! God grant thee prosperity ! ” 

“ And does it not pain thee to part with me ? ” said 
she. 

“ What ! ” I cried, “ how can I help being pained at 
parting with one so beautiful and wise ? ” 

“ I would never have parted from thee,” said she, 
“ but I suppose it must be so, nevertheless I will always 
remember thee. Well, now, thou art a free bird again, 
and canst fly away whithersoever thou desirest,” and 
she burst into tears. 

“ Forgive me, Sekleteya, I beg,” said I. 

“ What ! ” she cried, “ I owe thee thanks, not for- 
giveness.” 

“ Thanks ? ” I asked, “ how and for what ? ” 

“ I’ll tell thee. Thou art this sort of man. 
Thou wouldst think nothing of casting me adrift 
in the wide world, I put myself wholly into 
thy hands, and thou mightest have robbed me as thou 
didst like, and I would not have prevented thee — and 
all this thou knewest. But thou hast repaid confidence 
with confidence, and I know how much of mine thou 


124 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


hast consumed in these days — about four thousand in 
all. Another in thy place,” she said, “ would have 
gobbled up the whole pot and emptied the saucer on 
the hearth as well.” 

That’s what she said. Well, she was a kind-hearted 
old thing, that I will say. 

I gave her a parting kiss, and with a light heart 
and five thousand roubles in my pocket — no doubt she 
had taken these also into consideration — I appeared at 
St. Petersburg. I lived like a baron, went to the 
theatre, made acquaintances, sometimes from sheer 
ennui played on the boards, but I played much more 
frequently at cards. Cards are a capital occupation. 
You sit down at a table, and in the course of a single 
night you die and rise again ten times over. It is 
exciting to know that within the next few moments 
your last roubles may dribble away, and you yourself 
may step down into the street a beggar, with nothing 
but suicide or highway robbery before you. It is also 
good to know that your neighbour or partner has, with 
reference to his last rouble, exactly the same ticklish 
and cruelly poignant sensation as you yourself have 
had not so very long before him. To see red and pale 
excited faces, tremulous with the terror of being beaten 
and with the greed of gain, to look at them and win 
their cards away, one after the other — ah ! how 
strangely that excites the nerves and the blood! 

. . . You win a card — and it is just as if you stole 

away from the man’s heart a bit of warm flesh with the 


A ROLLING STONE. 


125 


nerves and blood. . . That’s being happy if you 

like ! This constant risk of falling is the finest thing 
in life, and the finest thought in life was well ex- 
pressed by the poet : 

“ Fierce contest is a rapturous bliss, 

E’en on the marge of the abyss.” 

Yes, there is rapture in it, and, in general, it is 
only possible to feel happy when you are risking 
something. The more risk — the larger and fuller the 
life. Have you ever happened to starve? It has 
been my luck not to eat anything for twice twenty-four 
hours at a stretch . . . And look you, when the 

belly begins to prey upon itself, when you feel your 
vitals drying up and dying with hunger — then, for the 
sake of a bit of bread, you are ready to kill a man, a 
child ; you are ready for anything, and this capacity for 
crime has its own peculiar poetry, it is a very precious 
sensation, and, having once experienced it, you have 
a great respect for yourself. 

However, let us continue our varied story. As it is, 
it is spinning itself out as long as a funeral procession, 
in which I occupy the place of the dear departed. 
Ugh! what foolish comparisons do crowd into my 
head. Yet it is true, I suppose, though it is none the 
wiser, after all, for being that. Apropos, Mr. Balzac 
has a very true and timely expression — “ It is as stupid 
as a fact.” Stupid? Well, let it pass. What do I 
care about the difference between stupid and wise? 


126 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Well, as I was saying, I lived at St. Petersburg. It 
was a good sort of town, but it would be as good again 
if one half of its inhabitants were drowned in that 
tiresome sea which is always flop-flopping around it. 
I lived a merry, easy life at St. Petersburg for two or 
three years, under the protection of a lady who had 
taken a great fancy to me ; but then, in order to oblige 
a friend, I seriously offended the police, and they asked 
me whither I would like to go out of St. Petersburg. 
I suggested Tsarskoe-Selo. “No,” they said, “you 
must go further.” At last we effected a com- 
promise, and Tula was fixed upon. “ Very well, let it 
be Tula then,” said they. “ You may go even further,” 
they said, " if you like, but you must not appear here till 
three years have expired. Your documents we will 
keep by us in the meantime as a memento of you, and 
permit us to offer you in exchange a transit certificate 
to Tula. Try within four-and-twenty hours to take 
your flight from hence.” Well, thought I, what am I to 
do now ? One must obey one’s superiors, how can one 
help doing so? 

Well, there I was. I sold all my property to my 
landlady for a mere song, and posted off to my pro- 
tectress. She had given orders that I was not to be 
admitted, the minx! I then went on to two or three 
others of my acquaintances — they met me as if I were 
a leper. \I spat upon them all, and repaired to a holy 
place I knew of, there to spend the last hours of my 
life at Petersburg. At six o’clock in the morning I 


A ROLLING STONE. 


127 


issued from thence without a farthing in my pocket — 
I had played at cards and was stony broke! So 
thoroughly had a high official cleared me out that I 
was even lost in admiration at his talent, without feeling 
the least humiliation at having been beaten. What 
was I to do next? I went, why I know not, to the 
Moscow Station, entered and mingled with the crowd. 
I saw the train to Moscow come in. I got into a 
carriage and sat down. We passed two or three 
stations, and then they drove me out in triumph. They 
wanted to report me, asked who I was ; but when I 
showed them my testimonial they left me in peace. 
“ Go on further,” said they, and I went. Ten versts I 
traversed, I grew tired, and felt that I must have 
something to eat. There was a sentry-box, belonging 
to a sentry of a line regiment. I went up to him: 
“ Give me a bit of bread, dear little friend,” I said. He 
looked at me. He gave me not only bread but a large 
cup of milk. I passed the night with him, for the first 
time in my life in vagabond fashion, in the open air, 
on straw, in the field behind the sentry-box. I awoke 
next day, the sun was shining, the air like champagne, 
green things all round, and the birds singing. I took 
some more bread from the sentry and went on further. 

You should understand that in a vagabond life there 
is something that draws you on and on, something that 
quite swallows you up. It is pleasant to feel yourself 
free from obligations, free from the various little fetters 
tying down your existence when you live among 


128 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


men ; free from all those bagatelles obstructing 
your life to such an extent that it ceases to be 
a satisfaction, and becomes a weary burden — 
a heavy basket-like burden in the nature of an 
obligation to dress becomingly, to speak becomingly, 
and do everything according to an accepted form and 
not as you would have it On meeting an acquaint- 
ance, for instance, you must use the accepted formula 

and say: How do you do? — instead of: Be d d! 

as you would sometimes like to say. 

In general — if I may speak the truth freely — these 
foolishly-ceremonious usages are such as to turn the 
mutual relations of respectable citizens into a weari- 
some comedy. Nay, even into a base comedy, for 
nobody ever calls anybody a fool or a villain to his 
face — or if it be done sometimes it is only in an access 
of that sincerity which we call anger. 

Now the vagabond position is clean outside all these 
tinsel trappings. The very circumstance that you 
renounce all the earlier conveniences of life without 
regret, and can exist without them, gives you a pleasant 
sense of elevation in your own eyes. You take up 
an unreservedly indulgent attitude towards yourself 
— though for the matter of that I for one have never 
been severe towards myself. T have never taken myself 
to task, the teeth of my conscience have never gnawed 
me, nor have I ever been scratched by the claws of 
my reason. You must know that very early, and as 
if insensibly, I appropriated the most simple and 


A ROLLING STONE. 


129 


sensible of philosophies : however you may live you 
must die all the same. Why then come to logger- 
heads with yourself — why drag yourself by the tail 
to the left when your nature with all her might pricks 
you on to the right? Pah! I cannot endure people 
who are always rending themselves in twain. Why do 
they strive and strive? Supposing I were to talk to 
some of these monstrosities, this is what I should ask 
them : “ Why do you go on like this ? Why do you 
make such a fuss? ” “ I am striving after self-perfec- 
tion,” he would say. “But what for? — what on earth 
for ? ” “ Because human perfection is the sense of life.” 
“ Well, I don’t understand that at all. Now if you talk 
about the perfection of a tree, the sense of your words 
would be quite clear to me. Its perfection is to be 
measured by its utility; you may use it for making 
cart shafts or coffins, or anything else useful to man. 
Very well ! But your striving after perfection is 
entirely your own affair. But tell me, why do you 
come to me and try to convert me to your faith ? ” 
“ Because,” he would say, “ you are a beast, and don’t 
seek out the sense of life.” “ But I have found it if 
I am a brute, and the consciousness of my brutality 
does not overwhelm me.” “ You lie,” he would say ; 
“ if you are conscious of it you ought to try to im- 
prove.” “ Improve ? How ? Here I am, you see, 
living my own life in the world ; my mind and my 
feelings are at one with each other, and word and 
deed are in perfect harmony.” “ That,” he would say, 

1 


130 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ is vileness and cynicism.” And so the whole lot of 
them would argue of course. I feel that they are 
liars and fools — I feel that, I say, and I cannot but 
despise them. For indeed — I know what people are 
— if everything which is mean, dirty, and evil to-day, 
were to be declared by you to-morrow upright, pure, 
and good — all these snouts, without any effort of their 
own, would to-morrow be upright, pure, and good. 
One thing only would be necessary — the cowardice 
to annihilate self within themselves. That’s how it is. 

That’s putting it strong, you’ll say. Bosh! It is 
so. Let it be strongly put, it’s none the less right 
for all that. Look now ! I’ll put it like this : Serve 
God or the Devil, but don’t serve God and the Devil. 
A good rascal is always better than a shoddy honest 
man. There’s black and there’s white, but mix them 
and you only get a dirty smudge. In all my life I 
have only met with shoddy honest folks — the sort 
you know whose honesty is piecemeal, as it were, just 
as if they had picked it up beneath windows as beggars 
gather crumbs. This sort of honesty is parti-coloured, 
badly stuck together, as if with pegs ; it is the bookish 
honesty, which is learnt by repetition, and serves men 
in much the same way as their best trousers, which 
are trotted out on state occasions. And, in general, 
the best part of good people is made up for Sunday 
use ; they keep it not in them but by them, for show, 
to take a rise out of each other ... I have met 
with people naturally good, but they are rarely to be 


A ROLLING STONE. 


131 

met with, and only among simple folks outside the 
walls of towns. You feel at once that these really 
are good. And you see that they are born good. 
Yes. 

But be that as it may. Deuce take the whole lot 
of them, good or bad. What’s Hecuba to me, or I to 
Hecuba ! 

I am well aware that I am relating to you the facts of 
my life briefly and superficially, and that it will be 
difficult for you to understand the why and the where- 
fore, but that’s my affair. It’s not the facts but the 
inclinations that are of importance. Facts are rot and 
rubbish. I can make all sorts of facts if I like. For 
instance, I can take this knife and stick it in your 
throat. That would be a fact of the first order. Or 
if I were to stick myself with it that also would be a 
fact, and in general you may make all sorts of facts 
according to inclination. Inclinations — there you have 
the whole thing. Inclinations produce facts, and they 
create ideas — and ideals. And you know what ideals 
are — eh? Ideals are simply crutches, expressly in- 
vented for the period when man has become a wretched 
brute, obliged to walk on his hind paws only. On 
raising his head from the grey earth he sees above 
him the blue sky, and is dazzled by the splendour of 
its brightness. Then, in his stupidity, he says to him- 
self : I will reach it. And thenceforth he hobbles 
about the earth on these crutches, holding himself 
upright on his hind paws with their assistance to this 
very day. 


I 3 2 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Pray don’t imagine that I also am climbing up to 
Heaven — I have never experienced any such desire — 
I only say it because it sounds well. 

But I have let my story get knotted and tangled 
again. However, it doesn’t matter. It is only in 
romances that the skein of events revolves regularly ; 
but our life is an irregular, clueless jumble. Why do 
they pay money for romances while I grow old in 
vain? The Devil only knows. 

Well, let’s get on . . . This wandering life 

pleased me — pleased me all the more because I soon 
discovered a means of subsistence. Once, as I was 
on the trot, I perceived coming towards me — a Manor 
House stood forth picturesquely in the distance — three 
highly genteel figures, a man and two ladies. The 
man already had some grey in his beard, and looked 
very genteel about the eyes ; the faces of the ladies 
were somewhat pinched, but they also were highly 
genteel. I put on the mug of a martyr, drew up level 
with them, and begged for a night’s lodging at the 
Manor House. They looked at one another, and 
deliberated a long time among themselves as if it were 
a matter of great importance. I bowed politely, 
thanked them, and went on without making too much 
haste. But they turned back and came after me. We 
entered into conversation. Who was I, whence did I 
come, what was I about? They were of a human 
temperament — liberal views, and their very questions 
suggested such answers to me that by the time we 


A ROLLING STONE. 


*33 


had reached the Manor House I had lied to them — 
the Devil only knows how much! I had been a 
student, I had taught the people, my soul was held 
captive to all manner of ideas, etc., etc. And all this 
simply because they themselves would have it so. All 
I did was not to stand in the way of their taking me 
for what they wanted to take me for. When I began 
to reflect how hard the part would be that they wanted 
me to play, I was not a little out of conceit with myself, 
I can tell you. But after dinner I quite understood 
that it was for my own interest to play this part, for 
they ate with a truly divine taste. They ate with 
feeling, ate like civilised people. After the meal they 
conducted me to a little apartment, the man provided 
me with trousers and other requisites — and, speaking 
generally, they treated me humanely. Well, and I, in 
return, loosed the reins of my imagination for their 
behoof. 

Queen of Heaven, how I lied! Talk of Khlesta- 
kov !* Khlestakov was an idiot ! I lied without ever 
losing the consciousness that I was lying, although 
it was my delight to lie my utmost. I lied to such 
an extent that even the Black Sea would have turned 
red if it could have heard my lying. These good 
people listened to me with delight — listened to me and 
fed me, and looked after me as if I had been a sick 
child of their own family. And I in return made up 


The hero of Gogol’s famous comedy, “ Revizor. ’ 


*34 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


all sorts of things for them. Now it was that I 
profited by all the good little books I had ever read, 
and by the learned disputations of my wife’s Scribes 
and Pharisees. 

Believe me, to lie with gumption is a high delight. 
If you lie and see that folks believe you, you feel your- 
self on a higher level, and to feel yourself above your 
fellows is a rare satisfaction. To command their 
attention and think much of yourself in consequence 
is foolishness ; but to fool a man is always pleasant 
And besides, it is pleasant to the man himself to listen 
to lies — good lies — lies which do not go against the 
grain. And it is possible that every lie, good or the 
reverse, is a good lie. There is scarcely anything 
in the world more worthy of attention than the various 
popular fables : notions, dreams, and such like. Let 
us take love for instance. I have always loved in 
women just that which they have never possessed, and 
with which I myself have generally requited them. And 
this, too, is the best thing in them. For instance, you 
come across a fresh little wench and immediately you 
think to yourself : such a one must needs embrace 
you this way, or kiss you that way. If in tears, she 
must look thus, and if she laughs — thus. And then 
you persuade yourself that she has all these qualities, 
and must certainly be exactly as you imagine her to 
be. And, of course, when you make her acquaintance, 
and come to know her as she really is — you find your- 
self sitting triumphantly in a puddle ! But that is of 


A ROLLING STONE. 


J 3 5 


no importance. You cannot possibly make an enemy 
of fire simply because it burns you sometimes, you must 
remember that it always warms you. Isn’t that so? 
Very well. For the same reason you must not call 
a lie harmful ; in every case put up with it and prefer it 
to truth. . . Besides, it is quite uncertain what this 

thing called Truth is really like. Nobody has ever 
seen her passport, and possibly if she were called upon 
to produce her documents the deuce only knows how 
it would turn out. 

But here I am like Socrates, philosophising instead 
of attending to my business. 

Well, I lied to these good people till I had exhausted 
my imagination, and as soon as I realised the danger 
of being a bore to them — I went on further, after 
residing with them for three weeks. I departed well 
provisioned for the journey, and I directed my foot- 
steps towards the nearest police-station in order that I 
might go from thence to Moscow. But from Moscow 
to Tula I arrived in vain, in consequence of the 
carelessness of my conductors. 

Behold me, then, face to face with the Police-master 
at Tula. He looked at me and inquired : 

“ What profession do you mean to follow here ? ” 

“I don’t know,” I said. 

“ And why did they send you away from 
Petersburg?” he said. 

“ That also I don’t know,” said I. 

“ Obviously for some debauch not foreseen by the 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


136 

.criminal code — eh?” and he cross-examined me 
searchingly. 

But I remained inscrutable. 

“You are a very inconvenient sort of person,” he 
observed 

“ Everyone, I suppose, has his own speciality, my 
good sir,” I rejoined. 

He thought the matter over, and then he made me 
a proposition. “ As you have chosen your own place 
of residence, perhaps, if we do not please you, you 
will go further on. There are many other towns for 
choice — Orel, Kursk, Smolensk for example. After all 
it is all the same to you where you live. Wouldn’t 
it be agreeable to you if we passed you on ? It would 
be quite a relief to us not to have the bother of look- 
ing after your health. We have such a mass of 
business here, and you — pardon my candour — seem to 
be a man fully capable of increasing the cares of the 
police ; nay, you even seem to me expressly made for 
the purpose. Well now,” says he, “ would you like me 
to give you a treshnetsa* to assist you on your way ? ” 

“You seem to appraise your duties somewhat 
cheaply,” said I, “ I think it would be better if you let 
me remain here under the protection of the laws of 
Tula.” 

But he obstinately refused to take me even as a gift. 
He was an odd sort of chap ! Well, I got fifteen roubles 


A small Russian coin. 


A ROLLING STONE. 


137 


out of him, and went on to the town of Smolensk. You 
see ! The most awkward position contains within it 
the possibility of something better. I affirm this on 
the basis of solid experience and on the strength of 
my deep faith in the dexterity of the human mind. 
Mind — that’s the power! You are still a young man, 
and what I say to you is this : believe in mind and you 
shall never fall ! Know that every man holds within 
him a fool and a rogue ; the fool is his senses, the rogue 
is his mind. His senses are the fool because they are 
upright, just, and cannot dissemble, and how is it 
possible to live without dissimulation ? It is indispen- 
sable to dissemble ; it is necessary to do so even from 
compassion, and most of all when they — your senses 
of course — pity others. 

So I walked into Smolensk, feeling that the ground 
was firm beneath me, and that on the one hand 
I could always count upon the support of humane 
people, and on the other hand I was always sure of 
the support of the Police. I was necessary to the first 
for the display of their feelings, and to the second I 
was unnecessary — therefore they and others were 
bound to pay me out of their superfluities. 

That’s how it was then! 

So I went along and fell quite in love with myself. 
My prospects were excellent. I fell in with a little 
muzhik. He looked up and asked : 

" You will be one of the Enquiry- Agents, I 
suppose ? ” 


* 3 * 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ Enquiry- Agents,” I thought, “what does he 
mean ? ” — but I answered : 

“Yes, of course I am! ” 

“Did you come along the Trepovka Road?” he 
asked. 

“ Yes, along the Trepovka,” I answered. 

“ And will you hire the folks soon ? ” he said. 

“ Very soon,” said I. 

“ Listen, will they take deposits ? ” 

“ They will.” 

“ Have you heard how much per head ? ” 

“Yes, about two griveniki* per head.” 

“ Laws ! ” said the little muzhik. 

I put two and two together, guessed why he was 
ploughing there, and asked him whence he came ? how 
many soulst there were in his village? how many 
could go out to work? how many went on foot? how 
many could go on horseback? 

He understood me. 

“ You are going to take labourers out of our village, 
eh ? ” said he. 

“ It is all the same to me where I take them from,” 
said I. 

I took from them a bank-note and promised to 
give to their village the preference over other villages. 
I took two griveniki per head from the labourers 
who had no horses, and thirty kopecks from the 


A grivenik = io kopecks = about 2^d. f Peasants. 


A ROLLING STONE. 


i39 


labourers who had, on the pretext of giving them 
a written assurance of employment for a period fixed 
by myself. They handed me over about a hundred 
roubles* or so. And I wrote out little receipts for 
them, said a few kind words to them, and so bade 
them adieu. 

I appeared at Smolensk, and as it was already 
growing cold, I resolved to pass the winter there. I 
quickly found some good people and stayed with them. 
The winter didn’t pass half badly, but soon spring 
came and, would you believe it, it drew me out of the 
town. I wanted to loaf about — and who was there to 
prevent me? Off I went and strolled about for a 
whole summer, and in the winter I plumped down into 
the city of Elizavetgrad. There I plumped down, I 
say, and I could not wheedle myself in anywhere. 
I hunted high and low, and at last I found my way. 
I got the post of reporter of the local gazette — a 
petty affair, but it found me my grub and left me a 
pretty free hand. After that I made the acquaintance 
of some Junkers — there is a school for the Junkers of 
the cavalry regiment in the town — and established 
card-parties. We had some capital card play, and in 
the course of the winter I managed to grab a thousand 
roubles. And then spring again appeared. She found 
me with money and the appearance of a gentleman. 

Whither should I go? Well, I went to the town of 


140 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Slavyansk by water. There I played successfully 
till August, and then I was obliged to quit the town. 
I passed the winter at Zhitomir with a butterfly — she 
was wretched trash, but a woman of exquisite beauty. 

In this manner I passed the years of my banishment 
from Petersburg and then returned thither. The 
devil knows why, but the place has always had an 
attraction for me. I arrived there a gentleman with 
means. I sought out my acquaintances, and what do 
you think I discovered ? My adventures with the liberal 
people of the Moscow Government were notorious. 
Everything was known — how I had lived three 
weeks with the Ivanovs at the Manor House, feeding 
their hungry souls with the fruits of my fancy ; how I 
behaved to the Petrovs, and how I had impoverished 
Madame Vanteva. Well, and what of it? Necessity 
knows no law, and if seven doors are closed against 
you, ten more will open to you. But it was no go. 
I tried very hard to make for myself a stable position 
in society, and I could not do it. Was it because I 
had lost during these three years something of my 
capacity of consorting with men, or was it because 
people had grown more artful during that period ? And 
now when the shoe began to pinch the devil put it into 
my head to offer my services to the Detective Force. I 
offered myself in the capacity of an agent who keeps 
his eye upon the play-houses. They accepted me. 
The terms were good. With this secret profession I 
combined a public one — that of reporter to a small 


A ROLLING STONE. 


141 

gazette. I provided them with excellent newsletters, 
and occasionally composed the feuilletons for them. 
And then, too, I played. In fact so carried away was 
I by this card playing that I forgot to report it to the 
authorities. I completely forgot, you know, that it was 
my duty to do so. But when I lost I remembered : 
I must report this, I said to myself. But no, I thought, 
first let me win back my losings, and then I will make 
my report. In this way I put off the performance of my 
duty for a very long time, till at last I was actually 
grabbed by the police on the very scene of the offence 
behind a card-table. They abused me publicly as 
one of their own agents. Next day I was brought up 
in the usual way, a very savage indictment was laid 
against me; they told me I had absolutely no 
conscience whatever; and banished me from the 
capital — banished me a second time. And this time 
without the right of re-entry for the space of ten years. 

For six years I travelled about without complaining 
to God of my fate — what did I care! I will relate 
nothing about this period, for it was too monotonous 
— and manifold. Life in general is a gay bird. Some- 
times, indeed, it hasn’t a grain to peck at ; but it doesn’t 
do to be too exacting ; even people sitting on thrones, 
remember, haven’t always things exactly their own way. 
In such a life as mine there are no duties — that’s the 
first great advantage — and there are no laws except 
the law of nature — and that’s the second. We dis- 
posers of our lives may have our disquietudes — but 


142 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


then you’ll find fleas even in the best inns. On the other 
hand, you can go where you like, to the right, to the 
left, forwards, backwards, everywhere your fancy draws 
you ; and if your fancy doesn’t draw you, you can live 
on a peasant’s loaf — he is good, and will always give 
— you can live on the peasant’s loaf, I say, and lie 
down till the impulse seizes you to go on further. 

Where have I been? I have been in the Tolstoi 
Colonies, and I have fed in the kitchens of the Moscow 
merchants. I have lived in the great monastery at 
Kiev and at New Athos. I have been at Czen- 
stochowa, the holiest shrine in Poland ; at Muroma, the 
favourite place of pilgrimage in Russia. Sometimes 
it seems to me as if I have traversed every little foot- 
path in the Russian Empire twice over. And as soon 
as ever I have the opportunity of repairing my 
exterior I shall cross the frontier. I shall make for 
Roumania, and there every road lies open before you. 
F or Russia now begins to bore me, and there is nothing 
to be done in her that I have left undone. 

And, indeed, during these six years, it seems to 
me that I have accomplished a good deal. What a 
number of wondrous things I have said, and what 
wonders I have related ! You know the sort of thing. 
You come to a village, you beg for a night’s lodging, 
and when they have fed you — you give free reins 
to your fancy. It is even possible that I may have 
founded some new Sects, for I have spoken much, 
very much, concerning the Scriptures. And the 


A ROLLING STONE. 


*43 


muzhik has a fine nose for the Scriptures, and a couple 
of texts suffices him for the construction of an entirely 
new confession of faith which — but you know what I 
mean. And how many laws have I not composed 
about the division and repartition of land! Yes, I 
have infused a great deal of fancy into life. 

Well, that’s how I live. I live and believe : wish 
for a dwelling-place and it is yours. For I have 
common-sense and the women prize me. For instance, 
I come to the town of Nikolaiev, and I go to the suburbs 
where dwells the daughter of a soldier of Nikolaiev. 
The woman is a widow, handsome, and well to do. 
I come in and say : “ Well, Kapochka, here I am ; 
warm a bath for me! Wash me and clothe me, and I 
will abide with thee even from moon to moon ! ” She 
immediately does everything for me, and if she was 
entertaining a lover besides me, she drives him away. 
And I live with her, a month or more, as long as I 
like. For three years I lived with her, during the 
winter for two months, last year I lived with her even 
three months ; I might live with her the whole winter 
through if she were not so silly and did not bore me. 
Except her market garden, which brings her in two 
thousand roubles a year, the woman certainly wants 
nothing. 

And then I go to the Kuban, to the Labinskaya 
station. There lives the cossack, Peter Cherny, and 
he accounts me a holy man — many consider me a 
righteous man. Many simple believing folks say to 


i44 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


me : “ Little father, take this money and place a candle 
for me before the Just One when you are there . . 

I take it I respect believing folks, and do not want 
to offend them with the horrible truth. Not for the 
world would I let them know that I expend their 
mite, not for a candle for their patron, but in tobacco 
for my pipe. 

There is also much charm in the consciousness of 
your aloofness from people, in the clear comprehension 
of the height and stability of that wall of offences 
committed against them which I myself have freely 
erected. And there is much, both of sweet and bitter, 
in the constant risk of being unmasked. Life is a 
game. I stake on my cards everything, i.e., nothing, 
and I always win, without the risk of losing anything 
else except my own ribs. But I am certain that if 
people, anywhere, were to set about beating me, they 
would not be content with maiming me but would kill 
me outright. It is impossible to feel offended at this, 
and it would be foolish to fear it. 

And so, young man, I have told you my story. 
I’ve even spun it out a bit, as my story has its own 
philosophy, and you know that I take a pleasure in 
telling it. It appears to me that I have told it pretty 
well. I will go further, and say, very accurately. I 
have made up a good deal of it, no doubt, but if I 
have lied I call Heaven to witness that I have lied 
according to the facts. Look not upon them, but at 
my talent for exposition — that, I assure you, is faithful 


A ROLLING STONE. 


1 45 

to the original — my own souL I have set before you 
a dish hot from my fancy served up with the sauce 
of the purest truth. 

But why have I told you all this? I have told it 
you because, my dear fellow, I feel that you believe 
in me — a little. It is kind of you. Be it so ! — but — 
believe no man ! F or whenever he tells you anything 
about himself he is sure to be lying. If he be un- 
fortunate he lies in order to excite greater sympathy ; 
if he be prosperous he lies in order to make you envy 
him the more ; and in every case, whether he be 
fortunate or unfortunate, he lies in order to attract 
greater attention. 


V.— THE GREEN KITTEN* 


The round window of my chamber looked out upon 
the prison-yard. It was very high from the ground, 
but by placing the table against the wall and mounting 
upon it, I could see everything that was going on in 
the courtyard. Beneath the window, under the slope 
of the roof, the doves had built themselves a nest, 
and when I set about looking out of my window down 
into the court below, they began cooing above my 
head. 

I had lots of time to make the acquaintance of the 
inhabitants of the prison-yard from my coign of 
vantage, and I knew already that the merriest member 
of that grim and grey population went by the name of 
Zazubrina. 

He was a square-set, stout little fellow, with a ruddy 
face and a high forehead, from beneath which his 
large bright, lively eyes sparkled incessantly. 

His cap he wore at the back of his head, his ears 


The original title of this tale was “Zazubrina.” Written in 1897. 


THE GREEN KITTEN. 


i47 


stuck out on both sides of his shaven head as if in 
joke ; he never fastened the strings of his shirt-collar, 
he never buttoned his vest, and every movement of 
his muscles gave you to understand that he was a 
merry soul and a pronounced enemy of anger and 
sadness. 

Always laughing, alert and noisy, he was the idol 
of the yard ; he was always surrounded by a group of 
grey comrades, and he would always be laughing and 
regaling them with all sorts of curious pranks, 
brightening up their dull and sorrowful life with his 
hearty, genuine gaiety . . . 

On one occasion he appeared at the door of the 
prison-quarters ready to go for a walk with three 
rats whom he had dexterously harnessed as if they 
were horses. Sometimes his inventiveness took a 
cruel form. Thus, for instance, he once, somehow, 
glued to the wall the long hair of one of the prisoners, 
a mere lad, who was sitting on the floor asleep against 
the wall, and, when his hair had dried, suddenly 
awoke him. The lad quickly leaped to his feet, 
and clapping his slim lean hands to the back of his 
head, fell weeping to the ground. The prisoners 
laughed, and Zazubrina was satisfied. Afterwards — 
I saw it through the window — he fell a comforting the 
lad, who had left a no inconsiderable tuft of hair on 
the wall. 

Besides Zazubrina, there was yet another favourite 
in the prison — a plump, reddish kitten, a tiny, playful 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


148 

little animal, pampered by everyone. Whenever they 
went out for a walk, the prisoners used to hunt him up 
and take him with them a good part of the way, 
passing him on from hand to hand. They would run 
after him, too, in the yard, and let him cling on to their 
hands and feet with his claws, delighting in the 
sportive tricks of their pet. 

Whenever the kitten appeared on the scene, he 
diverted the general attention from Zazubrina, and the 
latter was by no means pleased with this preference. 
Zazubrina was at heart an artist, and as an artist had 
an inordinately good opinion of his own talents. 
When his public was drawn away from him by the 
kitten, he remained alone and sat him down in some 
hole or corner in the courtyard, and from thence 
would watch the comrades who had forgotten him 
just then. And I, from my window, would observe 
him, and felt everything with which his soul was full 
at such moments. It appeared to me that Zazubrina 
must infallibly kill the kitten at the first opportunity, 
and I was sorry for the merry prisoner who was thus 
always longing to be the centre of general attention. 
Of all the tendencies of man, this is the most injurious, 
for nothing kills the soul so quickly as this longing 
to please people. 

When you have to sit in a prison — even the life of 
the fungi on its walls seems interesting. You will 
understand therefore the interest with which I observed 
from my window the little tragedy going on below 


THE GREEN KITTEN. 


i49 


there, this jealousy of a kitten on the part of a man — 
you will understand, too, the patience with which I 
awaited the denouement. The denouement was, in- 
deed, approaching. It happened in this wise. 

On a bright, sunny day, when the prisoners were 
pouring out of doors into the courtyard, Zazubrina 
observed in a corner of the yard a pail of green paint, 
left behind by the painters who were painting the 
roof of the prison. He approached it, pondered over 
it, and, dipping a finger into the paint, adorned him- 
self with a pair of green whiskers. These green 
whiskers on his red face drew forth a burst of laughter. 
A certain hobbledehoy present, wishing to appropriate 
Zazubrina’ s idea, began forthwith to paint his upper 
lip ; but Zazubrina spoiled his fun for him by dipping 
his hand in the pail and adroitly besprinkling his 
whole physiognomy. The hobbledehoy spluttered 
and shook his head, Zazubrina danced around him, 
and the public kept on laughing, and egged on its 
jester with cries of encouragement. 

At that very moment the red kitten suddenly 
appeared in the yard. Leisurely he entered the court- 
yard, gracefully lifting his paws, trotting along with 
tail erect, and evidently without the slightest fear 
of coming to grief beneath the feet of the crowd 
frantically careering round Zazubrina and the be- 
spattered hobbledehoy, who was violently rubbing 
away with the palm of his hand the mass of oil and 
verdigris which covered his face. 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


x 5° 

“ My brothers ! ” someone suddenly exclaimed, 
"pussy is coming.” 

“ Pussy ! Ah, the little rogue ! ” 

“ What ho, ginger ! Puss, puss, puss ! ” 

They caught up the cat and he was passed from 
hand to hand ; everybody caressed him. 

“ Look, there’s no starving there ! What a fat little 
tummy ! ” 

“ What a big cat he’s growing ! ” 

“ And what claws he has got, the little devil ! ” 

“ Let him go ! Let him play as he likes ! ” 

“ Well, I’ll give him a back ! Play away, puss ! ” 
Zazubrina was deserted. He stood alone, wiping 
the green paint off his whiskers with his fingers, and 
watched the kitten leaping on to the backs and 
shoulders of the prisoners. Whenever he displayed 
a wish to sit still on any particular shoulder or back, 
the men would wriggle about and shake him off, and 
then he would set off leaping and bounding again 
from one shoulder to the next. This diverted them 
all exceedingly, and the laughter was incessant. 

“ Come, my friends ! let us paint the cat ! ” re- 
sounded the voice of Zazubrina. It sounded just as if 
Zazubrina, in proposing this pastime, at the same time 
begged them to consent to it. 

There was a commotion among the crowd of 
prisoners. 

“ But it will be the death of him,” cried one. 

“ Paint the poor beast — what a thing to say ! ” 


THE GREEN KITTEN. 


x 5 


“What! paint a live animal, Zazubrina! You 
deserve a hiding ! ” 

“ I call it a devilish good joke/' cried a little, broad- 
shouldered man with a fiery-red beard, enthusiastically. 

Zazubrina already held the kitten in his hands, and 
went with it towards the pail of paint, and then 
Zazubrina began singing : 

“ Look, my brothers ! look at that! 

See me paint the ginger cat ! 

Paint him well, and paint him green, 

And then we’ll dance upon the scene.” 

There was a burst of laughter, and holding their 
sides, the prisoners made a way in their midst, and I 
saw quite plainly how Zazubrina, seizing the kitten by 
the tail, flung it into the pail, and then fell a singing 
and dancing: 

“ Stop that mewing ! cease to squall ! 

Would you your godfather maul ? ” 

Peals of laughter! 

“ Oh, crooked-bellied Judas ! ” piped one squeaky 
voice. 

“ Alas, Batyushka ! ”* groaned another. 

They were stifled, suffocated with laughter. 
Laughter twisted the bodies of these people, bent 
them double, vibrated and gurgled in the air — a 


Little father. 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


* 5 * 

mighty, devil-may-care laughter, growing louder con- 
tinually, and reaching the very confines of hysteria* 
Smiling faces, in white kerchiefs, looked down from 
the windows of the women’s quarters into the yard 
The Inspector, squeezing his back to the wall, poked 
out his brawny body, and, holding it with both hands, 
discharged his thick, bass, overpowering laugh in 
regular salvoes. 

The joke scattered the folks in all directions around 
the pail. Performing astounding antics with his legs, 
Zazubrina danced with all his might, singing by way of 
accompaniment : 

u Ah, life is a merry thing, 

As the grey cat knew, I ween ; 

And her son, the ginger kitten, 

Now lives in a world all green/’ 


* Yes, that it will, deuce take you,” cried the man 
with the fiery-red beard. 

But Zazubrina could not contain himself. Around 
him roared the senseless laughter of all these grey 
people, and Zazubrina knew that he, and he alone, was 
the occasion of all their laughter. In all his gestures, 
in every grimace of his mobile comic face, this 
consciousness manifestly proclaimed itself, and his 
whole body twitched with the enjoyment of his 
triumph. He had already seized the kitten by the 
head, and wiping from its fur the superfluous paint, 


THE GREEN KITTEN. 


*53 


with the ecstasy of the artist conscious of his victory 
over the mob, never ceased dancing and improvising : 

" My dear little brothers, 

In the calendar let us look, 

Here’s a kitten to be christened, 

And no name for it in the book .’ 5 

Everything laughed around the mob of prisoners, 
intoxicated by this senseless mirth. The sun laughed 
upon the panes of glass in the iron-grated windows. 
The blue sky smiled down upon the courtyard 
of the prison, and even its dirty old walls seemed 
to be smiling with the smile of beings who fee! 
obliged to stifle all mirth, however it may run riot 
within them. From behind the gratings of the 
windows of the women’s department the faces of 
women looked down upon the yard, they also laughed, 
and their teeth glistened in the sun. Everything 
around was transformed, as it were, threw off its dull, 
grey tone, so full of anguish and weariness, and awoke 
to merriment, impregnated with that purifying laughter 
which, like the sun, made the very dirt look more 
decent 

Placing the green kitten on the grass, little islets 
of which, springing up between the stones, variegated 
the prison-yard, Zazubrina, excited, well-nigh blown, 
and covered with sweat, still continued his wild 
dance. 

But the laughter had already died away. He was 


*54 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


overdoing it, very much overdoing it The people 
were getting tired of him. Someone, here and there, 
still shrieked hysterically ; a few continued to laugh, 
but already there were pauses. At last there were 
moments when the silence was general, save for the 
singing, dancing Zazubrina, and the kitten which 
mewed softly and piteously as it lay on the grass. 
It was scarcely distinguishable from the grass in colour, 
and, no doubt, because the paint had blinded it and 
hampered its movements, the poor slippery, big- 
headed creature senselessly tottered on his trembling 
paws, standing still as if glued to the grass, and all the 
while it kept on mewing, Zazubrina commented on 
the movements of the kitten as follows : 

“ Look ye, Christian people, look, 

The green cat seeks a private nook, 

The wholesome ginger-coloured puss 
To find a place in vain makes fuss.” 

“ Very clever, no doubt, you hound,” said a red- 
haired lad. 

The public regarded its artist with satiated eyes. 

“ How it mews ! ” observed the hobbledehoy 
prisoner, twisting his head in the direction of the 
kitten, and he looked at his comrades. They regarded 
the kitten in silence. 

“ Do you think he’ll be green all his life long ? ” 
asked the lad. 

“ All his life long, indeed ! — how long do you think 


THE GREEN KITTEN. 


*55 


he will live, then ? ” began a tall, grey-bearded prisoner, 
squatting down beside poor puss ; “ don’t you see he’s 
dying in the sun, his fur is all sticking to him like 
glue ; he’ll turn up his toes soon. . 

The kitten mewed spasmodically, producing a re- 
action in the sentiments of the prisoners. 

“Turn up his toes, eh?” said the hobbledehoy, 
“ suppose we try to wash it off him? ” 

Nobody answered him. The little green lump 
writhed at the feet of the rough fellows, a pitiable 
object of utter helplessness. 

“ Pooh ! I’m all of a muck sweat ! ” screamed Zazu- 
brina, flinging himself on the ground. Nobody took 
the slightest notice of him. 

The hobbledehoy bent over the kitten and took it 
up in his arms, but immediately put it on the ground 
again. “ It’s all burning hot,” he explained. 

Then he regarded his comrades, and sorrowfully 
said : 

“ Poor puss, look at him ! We shall not have our 
puss much longer. What was the use of killing the 
poor beast, eh ? ” 

“ Wait ! I think it’s picking up a bit,” said the red- 
haired man. 

The shapeless green creature was still writhing 
on the grass; twenty pairs of eyes were following 
its movements, and there was not the shadow of a 
smile in any of them. All were serious, all were 
silent, all of them were as miserable to look upon 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


* 5 6 

as that kitten, just as if it had communicated its suffer- 
ing to them and they were feeling its pangs. 

“ Pick up a bit, indeed ! ” laughed the hobbledehoy 
sardonically, raising his voice, “ very much so ! Poor 
puss has had his day. We all loved him. Why did 
we torture him so? Let someone put him out of his 
misery.” 

" And who was the cause of it all ? ” shrieked the 
red-haired prisoner savagely. “ Why there he is, with 
his devilish joke ! ” 

“ Come,” said Zazubrina soothingly, “ didn’t the 
whole lot of you agree to it ? ” 

And he hugged himself as if he were cold. 

“ The whole lot of us, indeed ! ” sneered the 
hobbledehoy, “ I like that. You alone are to blame ! 
— yes, you are ! ” 

“ Don’t you roar, pray, you bull-calf ! ” meekly 
suggested Zazubrina. 

The grey-headed old man took up the kitten, and 
after carefully examining it, pronounced his opinion : 

“ If we were to dip it in kerosene we might wash the 
paint off.” 

“ If you’ll take my advice you’ll seize it by the tail 
and smash it against the wall,” said Zazubrina, adding, 
with a laugh, “ that’s the simplest way out of it” 

“ What ? ” roared the red-haired man, “ and if I were 
to treat you the same way, how would you like it ? * 

“ Th e devil,” screamed the hobbledehoy, and, 
snatching the kitten out of the old man’s hands, he 


THE GREEN KITTEN. 


i57 


set off running. The old man and a few of the others 
went after him. 

Then Zazubrina remained alone in the midst of a 
group of people, who glowered upon him with evil 
and threatening eyes. They seemed to be waiting 
for something from him. 

w Remember, I am not alone, my friends,” whined 
Zazubrina. 

“ Shut up ! ” shrieked the red-haired man, looking 
at the door ; “ not alone ! Who else is there, then ? ” 

“ Why the whole lot of you here,” piped the jester 
nervously. 

“ You hound, you ! ” 

The red-haired man shook his clenched fist in 
Zazubrina’s very teeth. The artist dodged back only 
to get a violent blow in the nape of the neck. 

“ My friends . . .” he implored piteously. But 

his friends had taken note that the two warders were 
& good way off, and, thronging quickly round their 
favourite, knocked him off his legs with a few blows. 
Seen from a little distance the group might easily 
have been taken for a party engaged in lively con- 
versation. Surrounded and concealed by them, Zazu- 
brina lay there at their feet. Occasionally some dull 
thuds were audible — they were kicking away at 
Zazubrina’s ribs, kicking deliberately, without the 
least hurry, each man waiting In turn for a particularly 
favourable kicking spot to be revealed as his neigh- 
bour, after planting his blow, wriggled his foot out of 
action. 


i5« 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Three minutes or so passed thus. Suddenly the 
voice of the warder resounded in their ears : 

‘‘Now, you devils! what are you about there?” 

The prisoners did not leave off the tormenting 
process immediately. One by one they slowly tore 
themselves away from Zazubrina, and as each one of 
them went away, he gave him a parting kick. 

When they had all gone, he still remained lying on 
the ground. He lay on his stomach, and his shoulders 
were all shivering — no doubt he was weeping — and he 
kept on coughing and hawking. Presently, very 
cautiously, as if fearing to fall to pieces, he slowly 
began to raise himself from the ground, leaning heavily 
on his left arm, then bending one leg beneath him, 
and whining like a sick dog, sat down on the 
ground. 

“You’re pretending!” screeched the red-haired 
man in a threatening voice. Then Zazubrina made an 
effort, and quickly stood on his feet 

Then he tottered to one of the walls of the prison. 
One arm was pressed close to his breast, with the other 
he groped his way along. There he now stood, holding 
on to the wall with his hand, his head hanging down 
towards the ground. He coughed repeatedly. 

I saw how dark drops were falling on to the ground ; 
they also glistened quite plainly on the grey ground 
of the prison wall. 

And so as not to defile with his blood the official 
place of detention, Zazubrina kept on doing his best 


THE GREEN KITTEN. 


i59 


to make it drip on the ground, so that not a single drop 
should fall on the wall. 

How they did laugh and jeer at him to be 
sure . . . 

From henceforth the kitten vanished. And 
Zazubrina no longer had a rival to divide with him 
the attention of the prisoners. 


VI.— COMRADES. 


I. 

The burning sun of July shone blindingly down on 
Smolkena, flooding its old huts with liberal streams of 
bright sunshine. There was a particularly large 
quantity of sunlight on the roof of the Starosta’s* hut, 
not so long ago re-roofed with smoothly-planed, yellow, 
fragrant, boards. It was Sunday, and almost the 
whole population of the village had come out into the 
street thickly grown over with grass and spotted here 
and there with lumps of dry mud. In front of the 
Starosta’s house, a large group of men and womea 
were assembled ; some were sitting on the mound of 
earth round the hut, others were sitting on the bare 
ground, others were standing. The little children 
were chasing each other in and out of the groups, to 
an accompaniment of angry rebukes and slaps from 
the grown-ups. 

The centre of this crowd was a tall man, with large 


Chief ©f a village community. 


COMRADES. 


161 

drooping moustaches. To judge from his cinnamon- 
brown face, covered with thick, grey bristles, and a 
whole network of deep wrinkles — judging from the 
grey tufts of hair forcing their way from under his 
dirty straw hat, this man might have been fifty years 
of age. He was looking on the ground, and the 
nostrils of his large and gristly nose were trembling, 
and when he raised his head to cast a glance at the 
window of the Starosta’ s house, his large, melancholy, 
almost sinister eyes became visible : they were deep 
sunk in their orbits, and his thick brows cast a shadow 
over their dark pupils. He was dressed in the brown 
shabby under-coat of a lay-brother, scarcely covering 
his knees, and was girt about with a cord. There was 
a satchel across his shoulder, in his right hand he held 
a long stick with an iron ferrule, his left was thrust 
into his bosom. Those around him regarded him sus- 
piciously, jeeringly, with contempt, and finally with an 
obvious joy that they had succeeded in catching the 
wolf before he had done mischief to the fold. He had 
come walking through the village, and, going to the 
window of the Starosta, had asked for something to 
drink. The Starosta had given him some kvas * and 
entered into conversation with him. But contrary to 
the habit of pilgrims, the wayfarer had answered very 
unwillingly. Then the Starosta had asked him for 
his documents, and there were no documents forth- 

* A sour popular Russian drink. 

L 


1 63 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


coming. And they had detained the wayfarer and had 
determined to send him to the local magistrate. The 
Starosta had selected as his escort the village 
Sotsky * and was now giving him directions in the 
hut, leaving the prisoner in the midst of the mob. 

As if fixed to the trunk of a willow tree, there the 
prisoner stood, leaning his bowed back against it But 
now on the staircase of the hut appeared a purblind 
old man with a foxy face and a grey, wedge-shaped 
beard. Gradually his booted feet descended the 
staircase, step by step, and his round stomach waggled 
solidly beneath his long shirt. From behind his 
shoulder protruded the bearded, four-cornered face of 
the Sotsky. 

“You understand then, my dear Efimushka?” 
inquired the Starosta of the Sotsky. 

“ Certainly, why not ? I understand thoroughly. 
That is to say, I, the Sotsky of Smolkena, am bound 
to conduct this man to the district magistrate — and 
that’s all.” The Sotsky pronounced his speech 
staccato, and with comical dignity for the benefit of 
the public. 

“ And the papers ? " 

“ The papers ? — they are stored away safely in my 
breast-pocket.” 

K Well, that’s all right,” said the Starosta approvingly, 
at the same time scratching his sides energetically. 


The Starosta’s deputy. 


COMRADES. 


163 


“ God be with you, then,” he added. 

“Well, my father, shall we stroll on, then?” said 
the Sotsky to the prisoner. 

“ You might give us a conveyance,” replied the 
prisoner to the proposition of the Sotsky. 

The Starosta smiled. 

“ A con-vey-ance, eh ? Go along ! Our brother 
the wayfarer here is used to lounging about the fields 
and villages — and we’ve no horses to spare. You 
must go on your own legs, that’s all.” 

“ It doesn’t matter, let us go, my father ! ” said the 
Sotsky cheerfully. “ Surely you don’t think it is too 
far for us? Twenty versts at most, thank God! 
Come, let us go, ’twill be nothing. We shall do it 
capitally, you and I. And when we get there you 
shall have a rest.” 

“ In a cold cellar,” explained the Starosta. 

“ Oh, that’s nothing,” the Sotsky hastened to say, 
“ a man when he is tired is not sorry to rest even in a 
dungeon. And then, too, a cold cellar — it is cooling 
after a hot day — you’ll be quite comfortable in it.” 

The prisoner looked sourly at his escort — the latter 
smiled merrily and frankly. 

“Well, come along, honoured father! Good-bye, 
Vasil Gavriluich! Let’s be off! ” 

“ God be with you, Efimushka. Be on your 
guard ! ” 

“ Be wide-awake ! ” suggested some young rustic 
out of the crowd to the Sotsky. 


164 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“Do you think I’m a child, or what?" replied the 
Sotsky. 

And off they went, sticking close to the huts in 
order to keep in the strip of shadow. The man in 
the cassock went on in front, with the slouching but 
rapid gait of an animal accustomed to roaming. The 
Sotsky, with his good stout stick in his hand, walked 
behind him. 

Ehmushka was a little, undersized, muzhik, but 
strongly built, with a broad, good-natured face framed 
in a rough, red straggling beard beginning a little 
below his bright grey eyes. He always seemed to be 
smiling at something, showing, as he did so, his 
healthy yellow teeth, and wrinkling his nose as if 
he wanted to sneeze. He was clothed in a long cloak, 
trussed up in the waist so as not to hamper his feet, 
and on his head was stuck a dark-green, brimless 
cap, drawn down over his brows in front, and very 
much like the forage cap of his prisoner. 

His fellow-traveller walked along without paying 
him the slightest attention, just as if he were un- 
conscious of his presence behind him. They went 
along by the narrow country path, zigzagged through 
a billowy sea of rye, and the shadows of the travellers 
glided along the golden ears of com. 

The mane of a wood stood out blue against the 
horizon ; to the left of the travellers fields and fields 
extended to an endless distance, in the midst of which 
lay villages like dark patches, and behind these again 


COMRADES. 165 

lay fields and fields, dwindling away into a bluish 
mist. 

To the right, from the midst of a group of willows, 
the spire of a church, covered with lead, but not yet 
gilded over, pierced the blue sky — it glistened so in 
the sun that it was painful to look upon. The larks 
were singing in the sky, the cornflowers were smiling 
in the rye, and it was hot — almost stifling. The dust 
flew up from beneath the feet of the travellers. 

Eflmushka began to feel bored. Naturally a great 
talker, he could not keep silent for long, and, clearing 
his throat, he suddenly burst forth with two bars 
of a song in a falsetto voice. 

" My voice can’t quite manage the tune, burst it ! ” 
he said, “ and I could sing once upon a time. The 
Vishensky teacher used to say : * Come along. 

Eflmushka/ and then we would sing together — a 
capital fellow he was too ! ” 

“ Who was he ? ” growled the man in the cassock. 

“ The Vishensky teacher . . .” 

“ Did he belong to the Vishensky family?” 

“ Vishensky is the name of a village, my brother 
And the teacher’s name was Pavel Mikhaluich. A 
first-rate sort the man was. He died three years 
ago.” 

“ Young? ” 

“ Not thirty.” 

“What did he die of?” 

“ Grief, I should say.” 


i66 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Efimushka’s companion cast a furtive glance at him 
and smiled. 

“ It was like this, dear man. He taught and taught 
for seven years at a stretch, and then he began to 
cough. He coughed and coughed and he grew 
anxious. Now anxiety you know is often the begin- 
ning of vodka-drinking. Now Father Aleyksyei did 
not love him, and when he began to drink, Father 
Aleyksyei sent reports to town, and said this and that, 
the teacher had taken to drink, it was becoming a 
scandal. And in reply other papers came from the 
town, and they sent another teacher-fellow too. He 
was lanky and bony, with a very big nose. Well, 
Pavel Mikhaluich saw that things were going wrong. 
He grew worried and ill They sent him 

straight from the schoolroom to the hospital, and in 
five days he rendered up his soul to God . . . 

That’s all . . ” 

For a time they went on in silence. The forest drew 
nearer and nearer to the travellers at every step, 
growing up before their very eyes and turning from 
blue U> green. 

“We are going to the forest, eh?” inquired the 
traveller of Efimushka. 

“We shall hit the fringe of it, it is about a verst and 
a half distant now. But, eh? what? You’re a nice 
one, too, my worthy father, I have my eye upon you ! ” 

And Efimushka smiled and shook his head. 

“ What ails you ? ” inquired the prisoner. 


COMRADES. 


167 


“ Nothing, nothing ! Ah, ha ! Wo are going to 
the forest, eh?” says he. “You are a simpleton, my 
dear man. Another in your place would not have 
asked that question, that is, if he had had more sense. 
Another would have made straight for the forest, and 
then. . ” 

“ Well!” 

“ Oh, nothing, nothing. I can see through you, 
my brother. Your idea is a thin reed in my eyes. No, 
you had better cast away that idea, I tell you, so far as 
that forest is concerned. We must come to an under- 
standing, I see, you and I. Why, I would tackle three 
such as you, and polish you off singly with my left 
hand. . . Do you take me ? ” 

“Take you? I take you for a fool!” said the 
prisoner curtly and expressively. 

“ Ah, ha ! I’ve guessed what you were up to, eh ? ” 
said Ehmushka, triumphantly. 

“You scarecrow! What do you think you’ve 
guessed ? ” asked the prisoner with a wry smile. 

“ Why, about the wood ... I understand 
. . . I mean that when we came to the wood you 

meant to knock me down — knock me down, I say — 
and bolt across the fields or through the wood. Isn’t 
that so ? ” 

“ You’re a fool ! ” — and the enigmatic man shrugged 
his shoulders . . . “ Come now, where could I 

go?” 

“ Where ? why where you liked, that was your 
affair.” 


i68 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“But where?” Efimushka’s comrade was either 
angry or really wished to hear from his escort where 
he might have been expected to go. 

“I tell you, wherever you chose,” Efimushka ex- 
plained quietly. 

“ I have nowhere to run to, my brother, nowhere ! ” 
said his companion calmly. 

“ Well, well ! ” exclaimed his escort, incredulously, 
and even waved his hand. “ There’s always some- 
where to run to. The earth is large. There is always 
room for a man on it.” 

'* But what do you mean ? Do you really want me 
to run away, then ? ” inquired the prisoner curiously, 
with a smile. 

“Go along! You are really too good! Is that 
right now? You run away, and instead of you some- 
one else is put into gaol ! 1 also should be locked up. 
No, thank you. I’ve a word.to say to that.” 

“ You are a blessed fool, you are . . . but you 

seem a good sort of muzhik too,” said Efimushka’s 
comrade with a sigh. Efimushka did not hesitate to 
agree with him. 

“ Exactly, they do call me blessed sometimes, and it 
is also true that I am a good muzhik. I am simple- 
minded, that’s the chief cause of it. Other folks get 
on by artfulness and cunning, but what is that to me ? 
I am a man all by myself in the world. Deal falsely 
— and you will die ; deal justly — and you will die all 
the same. So I always keep straight, it is greater.” 


COMRADES. 


169 

“You’re a good fellow!” observed his companion 
indifferently. 

How ! Why should I make my soul crooked when 
I stand here all alone. I'm a free man, little brother. 
I live as I wish to live, I go through life and am a 
law to myself. . . Well, well!— But, say! what do 

they call you ? ” 

“ What ? Well — say Ivan Ivanov.” 

“ So! Are you of a priestly stock or what? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Really? I thought you were of a priestly family.” 

“ Because I am dressed like this, eh ? ” 

“ It's like this. You’ve all the appearance of a run- 
away monk or of an unfrocked priest But then, your 
face does not correspond. By your face I should take 
you for a soldier. God only knows what manner of 
man you are ” — and Efimushka cast an inquisitive look; 
upon the pilgrim. The latter sighed, readjusted his 
hat, wiped his sweating forehead, and asked the 
Sotsky : 

“Do you smoke ? ” 

“Alas! crying your clemency! I do, indeed, 
smoke.” 

He drew from his bosom a greasy tobacco-pouch, 
and bowing his head, but without stopping, began 
stuffing the tobacco into the clay pipe. 

“ There you are, then, smoke away ! ” The 
prisoner stopped, and bending down to the match 
lighted by his escort, drew in his cheeks. A little 
blue cloud rose into the air. 


1JO 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“Well, what may your people have been? City 
people, eh ? ” 

“ Gentry ! ” said the prisoner curtly, spitting aside 
at an ear of corn already enveloped by the golden 
sunshine. 

“ Eh, eh ! Very pretty ! Then how do you come to 
be strolling about like this without a passport ? ” 

“ It is my way ! ” 

“ Ah, ha ! A likely tale ! Your gentry do not usually 
live this wolf’s life, eh? You’re a poor wretch, you 
are!” 

“ Very well — chatter away ! ” said the poor wretch 
drily. 

Yet Efimushka continued to gaze at the passportless 
man with ever-increasing curiosity and sympathy, and 
shaking his head meditatively, continued : 

“ Ah, yes ! How fate plays with a man if you come 
to think of it? Well, it may be true for all that I 
know that you are a gentleman, for you have such a 
majestic bearing. Have you lived long in this guise? ” 

The man with the majestic bearing looked grimly 
at Efimushka, and waving him away as if he had 
been an importunate tuft of hair : “ Shut up ! ” said he, 
“ you keep on like an old woman ! ” 

“ Oh, don’t be angry ! ” cried Efimushka soothingly, 
“ I speak from a pure heart — my heart is very good.” 

“ Then you’re lucky. But your tongue gallops along 
without stopping, and that is unlucky for me.” 

“ All right ! I will shut up, maybe — indeed, it would 


COMRADES. 


171 

be easy to shut up if only a man did not want to hear 
your conversation. And then, too, you get angry 
without due cause. Is it my fault that you have taken 
up the life of a vagabond ? ” 

The prisoner stood still and clenched his teeth so 
hard that the sharp corners of his cheek-bones pro- 
jected, and his grey bristles stood up like a hedgehog’s. 
He measured Efimushka from head to foot with 
screwed-up eyes, which blazed with wrath. 

But before Efimushka had had time to observe this 
play of feature, he had once more begun to measure 
the ground with broad strides 

A shade of distraught pensiveness lay across the 
face of the garrulous Sotsky. He looked upwards, 
whence flowed the trills of the larks, and whistled in 
concert between his teeth, beating time to his footsteps 
with his stick as he marched along. 

They drew nearer to the confines of the wood. 
There it stood, a dark, immovable wall — not a sound 
came from it to greet the travellers. The sun was 
already sinking, and its oblique rays coloured the tops 
of the trees purple and gold. A breath of fragrant 
freshness came from the trees, the gloom and the 
concentrated silence which filled the forest gave birth 
to strange sensations. 

When a forest stands before our eyes, dark and 
motionless, when it is all plunged in mysterious silence, 
and every single tree seems to be listening intently to 
something — then it seems to us as if the whole forest 


173 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


were filled with some living thing which is only hiding 
away for a time. And you wait expectantly for some- 
thing immense and incomprehensible to the human 
understanding to emerge the next moment, and speak 
in a mighty voice concerning the great mysteries of 
nature and creation. 


II. 

On arriving at the skirts of the wood Efimushka 
and his comrade resolved to rest, and sat down on 
the grass round the trunk of a huge oak. The prisoner 
slowly unloosed his knapsack" from his shoulder, and 
said to the Sotsky indifferently : “ Would you like some 
bread ? ” 

" Give me some, and I’ll show you,” said Efimushka, 
smiling. 

And they began to munch their bread in silence. 
Efimushka ate slowly, sighing to himself from time to 
time, and gazing about the fields to the left of him ; 
but his comrade, altogether absorbed in the process 
of assimilation, ate quickly, and chewed noisily, with 
his eyes fixed steadily on his morsel of bread. The 
fields were growing dark, the ears of corn had already 
lost their golden colouring, and were turning a rosy- 
yellow ; ragged clouds were creeping up the sky from 
the south-west, and their shadows fell upon the plain — 
fell and crept along the corn towards the wood, where 
sat the two dusky human figures. And from the trees 


COMRADES. 


i73 


also shadows descended upon the earth, and the breath 
of these shadows wafted sorrow into the soul. 

“ Glory be to Thee, O Lord ! ” exclaimed 
Efimushka, gathering up the crumbs of his piece of 
bread from the ground, and licking them off the palm 
of his hand. . . “ The Lord hath fed us, no eye 

beheld us. And if any eye hath seen, unoffended 
it hath been. Well, friend, shall we sit here a 
little while ? How about that cold dungeon of ours ? ” 

The other shook his head 

“ Well, this is a very nice place, and has many 
memories for me. Over there used to be the mansion 
of Squire Tuchkov. . .” 

“ Where ? ” asked the prisoner quickly, turning in 
the direction indicated by a wave of Ehmushka’s hand. 

“ Over there, behind that rising land. Everything 
around here belongs to them. They were the richest 
people hereabouts, but after the emancipation they 
dwindled ... I also belonged to them once. All 
of us hereabouts belonged to them. It was a great 
family. The squire himself, Aleksander Nikietich 
Tuchkov, was a colonel. There were children, too, 
four sons ; I wonder what has become of them all now ? 
Really folks are carried away like autumn leaves by the 
wind. Only one of them, Ivan Aleksandrovich, is safe 
and sound — I am taking you to him now — he is our 
district magistrate. . . He is old already.” 

The prisoner laughed. It was a hollow, internal sort 
of laugh — ‘his bosom and his stomach were convulsed, 


174 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


but his face remained immovable, and through his 
gnashing teeth came hollow sounds like sharp barks. 

Efimushka shuddered painfully, and, moving his 
stick closer to his hand, asked : “ What ails you ? Is 
any thing the matter ? ” 

“ Nothing — or at any rate, it is all over now,” said 
the prisoner, spasmodically, but amicably — “ but go 
on with your story.” 

“Well, that’s how it is, you see — the Tuchkov 
Squires used to be something here, and now there 
are none left. . . Some of them died, and some of 

them came to grief, and now never a word do you hear 
of them — never a word. There was one in particular 
who used to be here. . . the youngest of the lot 

. . . they called him Victor . . . Vick. 

. . . He and I were comrades. In the days when 
the emancipation was promulgated, he and I were lads 
fourteen years old. . . Ah, what a fine young chap 

he was — the Lord be good to his dear little soul ! A 
pure stream, if ever there was one! — flashing along 
and gurgling merrily all day long. I wonder where he 
is now ? Alive or already no more ? ” 

“ Was he such a frightfully good fellow as all that? ” 
inquired Efimushka’s fellow-traveller quietly. 

“ That he was ! ” exclaimed Efimushka, “ handsome, 
with a head of his own, and such a good heart ! Ah, 
thou pilgrim man, good heart alive, he was a ripe 
berry if you like! If only you could have seen the 
pair of us in those days! Aye, aye, aye! What 


COMRADES. 


I 75 


games we did play ! What a merry life was ours ! — 
raspberries la la* ! — 4 Efimka ! ’ he would cry, 4 let us go 
a hunting ! ' He had a gun of his own — his father gave 
it to him on his name-day — and he let me carry it for 
him. And off we went to the woods for a whole day, 
nay, for two, for three days ! When we came home — 
he had an imposition, and I had a whacking. Yet 
look you ! the next day he would say : 4 Efimka ! shall 
we go after mushrooms ? ’ Thousands of birds we killed 
together. And as for mushrooms — we gathered 
poodsf of them ! And the butterflies and cockchafers 
he caught, and stuck them on pins in little boxes! 
And he taught me my lessons too ! 4 Efimka,’ said he, 

4 I’ll teach you.’ And he went at it hammer and tongs. 
4 Come, begin,’ says he ; 4 say A,’ and I roared 4 A-a-a ! ’ 
How we laughed. At first I looked upon it as a joke. 
What does a boor want with reading and writing? 
But he persuaded me. 4 Come, you little fool,’ says he, 
4 the emancipation was given to you that you might 
learn. You must learn your letters in order to know 
how to live and where to seek for justice.’ Of course, 
children heard their parents speak like that in those 
days, and began to talk the same way themselves. — 
It was all nonsense, of course — true learning is in the 
heart, and it is the heart that teaches the right way. 
So he taught me, you see ! How he made me stick to 
it! He gave me no rest, I can tell you. What 


Equivalent to “beer and skittles. 3 


f A pood = 40 lb. 


i?6 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


torments ! 1 Vick/ I said, ‘ I can’t learn my letters. It’s 
not in me. I really can’t do it.’ Oh, how he pitched 
into me. Sometimes he lambed it into me with a whip 
— but teach me he would ! ‘ Oh, be merciful/ I’d cry ! 

* Learn, then/ he would say ! Once I ran away from 
him, regularly bolted, and there was a to do. He 
searched for me all day with a gun — he would have 
shot me. He said to me afterwards : ‘ If I had met you 
that day/ said he, ‘ I should have shot you ; ’ that’s what 
he said! Ah, he was so fierce! Fiery, unbending, 
a genuine master. He loved me, and he had a soul of 
flame. Once my papa scored my back with the birch- 
rod, and when Vick saw it he rushed off to our hut, and 
there was a scene, my brother ! He was all pale and 
trembling, clenched his fists, and went after my father 
into his bedroom. ‘ How dare you do it ? ’ he asked. 
Papa said : ‘ But I’m his father ! ’ ‘ Father, eh? Very 
well, father! I cannot cope with you single-handed, 
but your back shall be the same as Efimka’s.’ He burst 
into tears after these words, and ran away. And what 
do you say to this, my father — he was as good as his 
word. Evidently he said something to the manor- 
house servants about it. F or one day my father came 
home groaning, and began to take off his shirt, but it 
was sticking to his back ! My father was very angry 
with me that time. ‘ I’ve suffered all through you/ he 
said, ‘ you’re a sneak, the squire’s sneak.* And he 
gave me a sound hiding. But he was wrong about 
my being the squire’s sneak. I was never that, he 
might have let it alone.’* 


COMRADES. 


J 77 


“ No, you were never that, Efim! ” said the prisoner 
with conviction, and he trembled all over, “ that’s plain, 
you could not become a lickspittle,” he added hastily. 

“ Ah, he was a one ! ” exclaimed Efimushka, “ and 
I loved him. Ah, Vick, Vick! Such a talented lad, 
too. Everyone loved him, it was not only I. He 
spoke several languages ... I don’t remember 
what they were. It’s thirty years ago. Ah! Lord, 
Lord! Where is he now? Well, if he be alive, he 
is either in high places ... or else he’s in hot 
water. Life is a strange distracting thing ! It seethes 
and seethes, and makes a pretty brew of the best 
of us! And folks vanish away; it is pitiful, to the 
last gasp it is pitiful ! ” Efimushka sighed heavily, 
and his head sank upon his breast. For a moment 
there was silence. 

“ And are you sorry for me ? ” asked the prisoner 
merrily. There was no doubt about his merry way 
of asking, his whole face was lit up by a good and 
kindly smile. 

“You’re a rum ’un!” exclaimed Efimushka; “one 
cannot but pity you of course ! What are you, if you 
come to think of it? Wandering about as you do, 
it is plain that you have nothing of your own in the 
earth — not a corner, not a chip that you can call your 
own. Maybe, too, you carry about with you some 
great sin — who knows what you are? In a word, 
you’re a miserable creature.” 

“ So it is,” answered the prisoner. 

M 


i7» 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


And again they were silent. The sun had already 
set, and the shadows were growing thicker. In the 
air there was a fresh smell of earth and flowers and 
sylvan humidity. For a long time they sat there in 
silence. 

“ However nice it may be to stay here we must 
still be going. We have some eight versts before 
us. Come now, my father, let us be going ! ” 

“ Let us sit a little longer,” begged “ the father.” 

“ Well, I don’t care, I love to be about the woods 
at night myself. But when shall we get to the district 
magistrate ? He will blow me up, it is late.” 

“ Rubbish, he won’t blow you up.” 

“I suppose you’ll say a little word on our behalf, 
eh ? ” remarked the Sotsky with a smile. 

" I may.” 

“ Oh— ai!” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You’re a joker. He’ll pepper you finely.” 

“ Flog me, eh? ” 

“ He’s cruel ! And quick to box one’s ears, and at 
any rate you’ll leave him a little groggy on your pins.” 

“ Well, well, we’ll make it all right with him,” said 
the prisoner confidently, at the same time giving his 
escort a friendly tap on the shoulder. 

This familiarity did not please Efimushka. At any 
rate he, after all, was the person in authority, and this 
blockhead ought not to have forgotten that Efimushka 
-carried his copper plaque of office on his bosom. 


COMRADES. 


179 


Efimushka rose to his feet, took up his stick, drew 
forth, his plaque, let it hang openly on the middle of 
his breast, and said, severely : 

“ Stand up! Let’s be off!" 

“I’m not going," said the prisoner. 

Efimushka was flabbergasted. Screwing up his 
eyes he was silent for a moment, not understanding 
why this prisoner should suddenly have taken to 
jesting. 

“ Come, don’t make a pother, let’s be going ! ’’ he 
said somewhat more softly. 

“I am not going," repeated the prisoner emphati- 
cally. 

“ Why not ? ’’ shrieked Efimushka, full of rage and 
amazement. 

“ Because I want to pass the night here with you. 
Come ! let us light a fire ! ’’ 

“ I let you pass the night here ? I light a fire here 
by your side, eh ? A pretty thing, indeed ! ’’ growled 
Efimushka. Yet at the bottom of his soul he was 
amazed. The man had said : I won’t go ! but had 
shown no signs of opposition, no disposition to quarrel, 
but simply lay down on the ground and that was all. 
What was to be the end of it? 

“ Don’t make a row, Efim ! ” advised the prisoner 
coolly. 

Efimushka was again silent, and, shifting from leg 
to leg as he stood over the prisoner, regarded him 
with wide-open eyes. And the latter kept looking at 


180 TALES FROM GORKY. 

him and looking at him and smiling. Efimushka fell 
a pondering as to what he ought to be doing next 

And how was it that this vagabond, who had been 
so surly and sullen all along, should all at once have 
become so gentle? Wouldn’t it be as well to fall 
upon him, twist his arms, give him a couple of whacks 
on the neck, and so put an end to all this nonsense? 
And with as severely an official tone as he could 
command, Efimushka said : 

“ Come, you rascal, stir your stumps ! Get up, I 
say! And I tell you this, I’ll make you trot along 
then, never fear! Do you understand? Very well! 
Look ! I am about to strike.” 

" Strike me ?” asked the prisoner with a smile. 

“ Yes, you ; what are you thinking about, eh? ” 

“What! would you, Efimushka Gruizlov, strike me, 
Vic Tuchkov? ” 

“ Alas ! you are a little wide of the mark, you are,” 
cried Efimushka in astonishment ; “ but who are you, 
really? What sort of game is this?” 

“ Don’t screech so, Efimushka ! It is about time 
you recognised me, I think,” said the prisoner, smiling 
quietly and regaining his feet ; “ how do you find 
yourself, eh ? ” 

Efimushka bounded back from the hand extended 
to him, and gazed with all his eyes at the face of his 
prisoner. Then his lips began to tremble, and his 
whole face puckered up. 

“ Viktor Aleksandrovich — is it really and truly 
you ? ” he asked in a whisper. 


COMRADES. 


181 


“ If you like I’ll show you my documents, or better 
still, I’ll call to mind old times. Let’s see — don’t you 
recollect how you fell into the wolf’s lair in the 
Ramensky fir-woods ? Or how I climbed up that tree 
after the nest, and hung head downwards for the fun 
of the thing? Or how we stole the plums of that 
old Quaker woman Petrovna? And the tales she used 
to tell us ? ” 

Efimushka sat down on the ground heavily and 
laughed awkwardly. 

“ You believe me now, eh? ” asked the prisoner, and 
he sat down alongside of him, looked him in the face, 
and laid a hand upon his shoulder. Efimushka was 
silent. It had grown absolutely dark around them. 
In the forest a confused murmuring and whispering 
had arisen. Far away in the thickest part of the 
wood the wail of a night-bird could be heard. A 
cloud was passing over the wood with an almost per- 
ceptible motion 

“ Well, Efim, art thou not glad to meet me ? Or 
art thou so very glad after all? Ah — holy soul! 
Thou hast remained the child thou wert wont to be. 
Efim? Say something, my dear old paragon! ” 

Efimushka cleared his throat violently. 

“ Well, my brother ! Aye, aye, aye ! ” and the 
prisoner shook his head reproachfully. “What’s up, 
eh ? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself ? Here are you, 
in your fiftieth year, and yet you waste your time in 
this wretched sort of business. Chuck it ! ” — and 


182 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


putting his arm round the Sotsky’ s shoulder he lightly 
shook him The Sotsky laughed, a tremulous sort 
of laugh, and at last he spoke, without looking at his 
neighbour. 

“ What am I ? . . . I’m glad, of course . . . 

And you to be like this? How can I believe it? You 
and . . . such a business as this! Vic — and in 
such a plight! In a dungeon . . . without pass- 
ports . v . living on crusts of bread . . . 

without tobacco . . . Oh, Lord! . . . Is this 

a right state of things? If I were like that for 
instance . . . and you were even a Sotsky . . . 

even that would be easier to bear! And now how 
will it end? How can I look you in the face? I 
had always a joyful recollection of you . . . Vic 

. . . as you may think . . . Even then my 

heart ached. But now ! Oh, Lord ! Why, if I were 
to tell people — they wouldn’t believe it.” 

He murmured these broken phrases, gazing fixedly 
at his feet, and clutching now his bosom and now his 
throat with one hand. 

“ There’s no need to tell folks anything about it. 
And pray cease ... it is not your fault, is it? 
Don’t be disquieted about me . . . I’ve got my 

papers. I didn’t show them to the Starosta because 
I didn’t want to be known about here. Brother Ivan 
won’t put me in quod ; on the contrary, he will help 
to put me on my legs again . . . I’ll stay with 

him a bit, and you and I shall go out hunting again, 


COMRADES. 


183 

eh ... You see how well things are turning 
out.” 

Vic said these words soothingly, in the tone used 
by grown-up people when they would soothe spoilt 
children. The moon emerged from the forest to meet 
the advancing cloud, and the edge of the cloud, 
silvered by her rays, assumed a soft opal tint. In 
the corn the quails were calling ; somewhere or other 
a land-rail rattled. The darkness of the night was 
growing denser and denser. 

“And this is all really true,” began Efimushka 
softly ; “ Ivan Aleksandrovich will be glad to see his 
own brother, and you, of course, will begin your life 
again. And this is really so . . . And we will 

go hunting again . . . Only ’tis not altogether 

as it was. I daresay you have done some deeds in 
the course of your life. And it is — ah, what is it ? ” 

Vic Tuchkov laughed. 

“ Brother Efimushka, I have certainly done deeds 
in my life and to spare ... I have run through 
my share of the property ... I have not 
succeeded in the service, I have been an actor, I have 
been a timber-trade clerk, after that I’ve had a troupe 
of actors of my own . . . and after that I’ve gone 

quite to the dogs, have owed debts right and left, got 
mixed up in a shady affair. Ah! I’ve been every- 
thing — and lost everything.” 

The prisoner waved his hand and smiled good- 
humouredly. 


184 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ Brother Efimushka, I am no longer a gentleman. 
I am quite cured of that. Now you and I will live 
together. Eh ! what do you say ? ” 

“Nothing at all/' said Efimushka with a stifled 
voice ; “ I’m ashamed, that’s all. Here have I been 
saying to you all ‘sorts of things . . . senseless 

words, and all sorts of rubbish. If it were a muzhik 
I could understand it . . . Well, shall we make 

a night of it here? I’ll make a fire.” 

“All right! make it!” 

The prisoner stretched himself at full length on 
the ground, face upwards, while the Sotsky dis- 
appeared into the skirt of the wood, from whence 
speedily resounded the cracking of twigs and branches. 
Soon Efimushka reappeared with an armful of fire- 
wood, and in a few moments a fiery serpent was 
merrily creeping along a little hillock of dry branches. 

The old comrades gazed at it meditatively, sitting 
opposite each other, and smoking their one pipe 
alternately. 

“ Just like it used to be,” said Efimushka sadly. 

“ Only times are changed,” said Tuchkov. 

“Well, life is stronger than character. Lord, how 
she has broken you down.” 

“ It is still undecided which of the two will prevail 
— she or I,” laughed Tuchkov. 

For a time they were silent. 

“ Oh, Lord God ! Vic ! how lightly you take it all ! ” 
exclaimed Efimushka bitterly. 


COMRADES. 185 

“ Certainly ! Why not ? What has been — is gone 
for ever!” observed Tuchkov philosophically. 

Behind them arose the dark wall of the softly 
whispering forest, the bonfire crackled merrily; all 
around them the shadows danced their noiseless 
dance, and over the plain lay impenetrable dark- 
ness. 


VII.— HER LOVER. 

An acquaintance of mine once told me the following 
story. 

When I was a student at Moscow I happened to 
live alongside one of those ladies who — you know what 
I mean. She was a Pole, and they called her Teresa 
She was a tallish, powerfully-built brunette, with black, 
bushy eyebrows and a large coarse face as if carved 
out by a hatchet — the bestjal gleam of her dark 
eyes, her thick bass voice, her cabman-like gait and 
her immense muscular vigour, worthy of a fishwife, 
inspired me with horror. I lived on the top flight and 
her garret was opposite to mine. I never left my door 
open when I knew her to be at home. But this, after 
all, was a very rare occurrence. Sometimes I chanced 
to meet her on the staircase or in the yard, and she 
would smile upon me with a smile which seemed to 
me to be sly and cynical. Occasionally, I saw her 
drunk, with bleary eyes, touzled hair, and a 
particularly hideous smile. On such occasions she 
would speak to me : 

“ How d’ye do, Mr. Student ! ” and her stupid laugh 


HER LOVER. 


187 


would still further intensify my loathing of her. I 
should have liked to have changed my quarters in 
order to have avoided such encounters and greetings ; 
but my little chamber was a nice one, and there was 
such a wide view from the window, and it was always 
so quiet in the street below — so I endured. 

And one morning I was sprawling on my couch, 
trying to find some sort of excuse for not attending my 
class, when the door opened, and the bass voice of 
Teresa the loathsome, resounded from my threshold: 
“ Good health to you, Mr. Student ! ” 

“ What do you want ? ” I said. I saw that her face 
was confused and supplicatory ... It was a very 
unusual sort of face for her. 

“ Look ye, sir ! I want to beg a favour of you. Will 
you grant it me? ” 

I lay there silent, and thought to myself : 

“ Gracious ! An assault upon my virtue, neither 
more nor less. — Courage, my boy ! ” 

“ I want to send a letter home, that’s what it is,” she 
said, her voice was beseeching, soft, timid. 

“ Deuce take you ! ” I thought ; but up I jumped, 
sat down at my table, took a sheet of paper, and said : 
“ Come here, sit down, and dictate ! ” 

She came, sat down very gingerly on a chair, and 
looked at me with a guilty look. 

“ Well, to whom do you want to write ? ” 

“ To Boleslav Kashput, at the town of Svyeptsyana, 
on the Warsaw Road. . 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


i S3 

“Well, fire away!” 

“ My dear Boles . . . my darling . . . my 

faithful lover. May the Mother of God protect thee ! 
Thou heart of gold, why hast thou not written for such 
a long time to thy sorrowing little dove, Teresa?” 

I very nearly burst out laughing. “A sorrowing 
little dove ! ” more than five feet high, with fists a 
stone and more in weight, and as black a face as if 
the little dove had lived all its life in a chimney, and 
had never once washed itself! Restraining myself 
somehow, I asked: 

“Who is this Bolest ? ” 

“ Boles, Mr. Student,” she said, as if offended with 
me for blundering over the name, “ he is Boles — my 
young man.” 

“ Young man ! ” 

“ Why are you so surprised, sir ? Cannot I, a girl, 
have a young man ? ” 

She? A girl? Well! 

“ Oh, why not ? ” I said, “ all things are possible. 
And has he been your young man long ? ” 

“ Six years.” 

“Oh, ho!” I thought “Well, let us write your 
letter. . .” 

And I tell you plainly that I would willingly 
have changed places with this Boles if his fair 
correspondent had been not Teresa, but some- 
thing less than she. 

“I thank you most heartily, sir, for your kind 


HER LOVER. 


189 


services,” said Teresa to me, with a curtsey. “ Perhaps 
1 can show you some service, eh? ” 

“No, I most humbly thank you all the same.” 

“ Perhaps, sir, your shirts or your trousers may want 
a little mending ? ” 

I felt that this mastodon in petticoats had made me 
grow quite red with shame, and I told her pretty 
sharply that I had no need whatever of her services. 

She departed. 

A week or two passed away. It was evening. I was 
sitting at my window whistling and thinking of some 
expedient for enabling me to get away from myself. 
I was bored, the weather was dirty. I didn’t want to 
go out, and out of sheer ennui I began a course of 
self-analysis and reflection. This also was dull enough* 
work, but I didn’t care about doing anything else. 
Then the door opened. Heaven be praised, someone 
came in. 

“ Oh, Mr. Student, you have no pressing business, 
I hope?” 

It was Teresa. Humph! 

“ No. What is it? ” 

“ I was going to ask you, sir, to write me another 
letter.” 

“Very well! To Boles, eh?” 

“ No, this time it is from him.” 

“ Wha-at? ” 

“ Stupid that I am ! It is not for me, Mr. Student, 
I beg your pardon. It is for a friend of mine, that is to 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


190 

say, not a friend but an acquaintance — a man acquaint- 
ance. He has a sweetheart just like me here, Teresa. 
That’s how it is. Will you, sir, write a letter to this 
Teresa? ” 

I looked at her — her face was troubled, her fingers 
were trembling. I was a bit fogged at first — and then 
I guessed how it was. 

“ Look here, my lady,” I said, " there are no Boleses 
or Teresas at all, and you’ve been telling me a pack 
of lies. Don’t you come sneaking about me any 
longer. I have no wish whatever to cultivate your 
acquaintance. Do you understand? ” 

And suddenly she grew strangely terrified and dis- 
traught ; she began to shift from foot to foot without 
moving from the place, and. spluttered comically, as 
if she wanted to say something and couldn’t. I waited 
to see what would come of all this, and I saw and felt 
that, apparently, I had made a great mistake in 
suspecting her of wishing to draw me from the path of 
righteousness. It was evidently something very 
different. 

“ Mr Student ! ” she began, and suddenly, waving 
her hand, she turned abruptly towards the door and 
went out. I remained with a very unpleasant feeling 
in my mind. I listened. Her door was flung violently 
to — plainly the poor wench was very angry. . . I 

thought it over, and resolved to go to her, and, in- 
viting her to come in here, write everything she wanted. 

I entered her apartment. I looked round. She 


HER LOVER. 


191 

was sitting at the table, leaning on her elbows, with 
her head in her hands. 

“ Listen to me,” I said. 

Now, whenever I come to this point in my story, 
I always feel horribly awkward and idiotic. Well, 
well! 

“ Listen to me,” I said. 

She leaped from her seat, came towards me with 
flashing eyes, and laying her hands on my shoulders, 
began to whisper, or rather to hum in her peculiar 
bass voice : 

“ Look you, now ! It’s like this. There’s no Boles 
at all, and there’s no Teresa either. But what’s that 
to you? Is it a hard thing for you to draw your pen 
over paper ? Eh ? Ah, and you, too ! Still such a 
little fair-haired boy! There’s nobody at all, neither 
Boles, nor Teresa, only me. There you have it, and 
much good may it do you ! ” 

“ Pardon me ! ” said I, altogether flabbergasted by 
such a reception, “what is it all about? There’s no 
Boles, you say?” 

“ No. So it is.” 

“ And no Teresa either? ” 

“And no Teresa. I’m Teresa.” 

I didn’t understand it at all. I fixed my eyes upon 
her, and tried to make out which of us was taking leave 
of his or her senses. But she went again to the table, 
searched about for something, came back to me, and 
said in an offended tone : 


192 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ If it was so hard for you to write to Boles, look, 
there’s your letter, take it ! Others will write for me.” 

I looked. In her hand was my letter to Bolds. 
Phew! 

“ Listen, _Teresa! What is the meaning of all 
this ? Why must you get others to write for you when 
I have already written it, and you haven’t sent it.” 

“ Sent it where?” 

“ Why, to this — Boles.” 

“ There’s no such person.” 

I absolutely did not understand it. There was 
nothing for me but to spit and go. Then she ex- 
plained. 

“ What is it? ” she said, still offended “ There’s no 
such person, I tell you,” and she extended her arms 
as if she herself did not understand why there should 
be no such person. u But I wanted him to be . . . 

Am I then not a human creature like the rest of them? 
Yes, yes, I know, I know, of course. . . Yet no 

harm was done to anyone by my writing to him that 
I can see. . 

“ Pardon me — to whom ? ” 

“To Boles, of course.” 

“ But he doesn’t exist.” 

“ Alas ! alas ! But what if he doesn’t ? He doesn’t 
-exist, but he might! I write to him, and it looks 
as if he did exist. And Teresa — that’s me, and he 
replies to me, and then I write to him again. . 

I understood at last And I felt so sick, so 


HER LOVER. 


i93 


miserable, so ashamed, somehow. Alongside of me, 
not three yards away, lived a human creature who had 
nobody in the world to treat her kindly, affectionately, 
and this human being had invented a friend for herself ] 

“ Look, now ! you wrote me a letter to Boles, and I 
gave it to someone else to read it to me ; and when 
they read it to me I listened and fancied that Boles was 
there. And I asked you to write me a letter from 
Boles to Teresa — that is to me. When they write 
such a letter for me, and read it to me, I feel quite sure 
that Boles is there. And life grows easier for me in 
consequence/’ 

“ Deuce take thee for a blockhead ! ” said I to 
myself when I heard this. 

And from thenceforth, regularly, twice a week, I 
wrote a letter to Boles, and an answer from Boles to 
Teresa. I wrote those answers well. . . She, of 
course, listened to them, and wept like anything, 
roared, I should say, with her bass voice. And in 
return for my thus moving her to tears by real letters 
from the imaginary Boles, she began to mend the holes 
I had in my socks, shirts, and other articles of clothing. 
Subsequently, about three months after this history 
began, they put her in prison for something or other. 
No doubt by this time she is dead. 

My acquaintance shook the ash from his cigarette, 
looked pensively up at the sky, and thus concluded : 

Well, well, the more a human creature has tasted 
of better things the more it hungers after the sweet 

N 


i 9 4 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


things of life. And we, wrapped round in the rags of 
our virtues, and regarding others through the mist of 
our self-sufficiency, and persuaded of our universal 
impeccability, do not understand this. 

And the whole thing turns out pretty stupidly — and 
very cruelly. The fallen classes, we say. And who 
are the fallen classes, I should like to know? They 
are, first of all, people with the same bones, flesh, and 
blood and nerves as ourselves. We have been told 
this day after day for ages. And we actually listen — 
and the Devil only knows how hideous the whole thing 
is. Or are we completely depraved by the loud 
sermonizing of humanism? In reality, we also are 
fallen folks, and so far as I can see, very deeply fallen 
into the abyss of self-sufficiency and the conviction 
of our own superiority. But enough of this. It is 
all as old as the hills — so old that it is a shame to speak 
of it Very old indeed — yes, that’s where it is ! 


VIII.— CHELKASH. 


The blue southern sky was bedimmed by the dust 
rising from the haven ; the burning sun looked dully 
down into the greenish sea as if through a thin grey 
veil. It could not reflect itself in the water, which in- 
deed was cut up by the strokes of oars and the furrows 
made by steam-screws and the sharp keels of Turkish 
feluccas and other sailing vessels, ploughing up in every 
direction the crowded harbour in which the free billows 
of the sea were confined within fetters of granite and 
crushed beneath the huge weights gliding over their 
crests, though they beat against the sides of the ships, 
beat against the shore, beat themselves into raging 
foam — foam begrimed by all sorts of floating rubbish. 

The sound of the anchor chains, the clang of the 
couplings of the trucks laden with heavy goods, the 
metallic wail of the iron plates falling on the stone 
flagging, the dull thud of timber, the droning of the 
carrier-wagons, the screaming of the sirens of the 
steamships, now piercingly keen, now sinking to a 
dull roar, the cries of the porters, sailors, and custom- 
house officers — all these sounds blended into the deaf- 
ening symphony of the laborious day, and vibrating 


196 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


restlessly, remained stationary in the sky over the 
haven, as if fearing to mount higher and disappear. 
And there ascended from the earth, continually, fresh 
and ever fresh waves of sound — some dull and mys- 
terious, and these vibrated sullenly all around, others 
clangorous and piercing which rent the dusty sultry air. 

Granite, iron, the stone haven, the vessels and the 
people — everything is uttering in mighty tones a 
madly passionate hymn to Mercury. But the voices 
of the people, weak and overborne, are scarce audible 
therein. And the people themselves to whom all this 
hubbub is primarily due, are ridiculous and pitiful. 
Their little figures, dusty, strenuous, wriggling into 
and out of sight, bent double beneath the burden of 
heavy goods lying on their shoulders, beneath the 
burden of the labour of dragging these loads hither 
and thither in clouds of dust, in a sea of heat and 
racket — are so tiny and insignificant in comparison 
with the iron colossi surrounding them, in comparison 
with the loads of goods, the rumbling wagons, and 
all the other things which these same little creatures 
have made ! Their own handiwork has subjugated 
and degraded them. 

Standing by the quays, heavy giant steamships are 
now whistling, now hissing, now deeply snorting, and 
in every sound given forth by them there seems to be 
a note of ironical contempt for the grey, dusty little 
figures of the people crowding about on the decks, 
and filling the deep holds with the products of their 


CHELKASH. 


197 


slavish labour. Laughable even to tears are the long 
strings of dockyard men, dragging after them tens of 
thousands of pounds of bread and pitching them 
into the iron bellies of the vessels in order to earn a 
few pounds of that very same bread for their own 
stomachs — people, unfortunately, not made of iron 
and feeling the pangs of hunger. These hustled, 
sweated crowds, stupefied by weariness and by the 
racket and heat, and these powerful machines, made 
by these selfsame people, basking, sleek and unruffled, 
in the sunshine — machines which, in the first instance, 
are set in motion not by steam, but by the muscles 
and blood of their makers — in such a juxtaposition 
there was a whole epic of cold and cruel irony. 

The din is overwhelming, the dust irritates the 
nostrils and blinds the eyes, the heat burns and 
exhausts the body, and everything around — the 
buildings, the people, the stone quays — seem to be on 
the stretch, full-ripe, ready to burst, ready to lose all 
patience and explode in some grandiose catastrophe, 
like a volcano, and thus one feels that one would be 
able to breathe more easily and freely in the refresh- 
ened air ; one feels that then a stillness would reign 
upon the earth, and this dusty din, benumbing and 
irritating the nerves to the verge of melancholy 
mania, would vanish, and in the town, and on the sea, 
and in the sky, everything would be calm, clear, and 
glorious. But it only seems so. One fancies it must 
be so, because man has not yet wearied of hoping for 


198 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


better things, and the wish to feel himself free has not 
altogether died away within him. 

Twelve measured and sonorous strokes of a bell 
resound. When the last brazen note has died away 
the wild music of labour has already diminished by 
at least a half. Another minute and it has passed into a 
dull involuntary murmur. The voices of men and the 
splashing of the sea have now become more audible. 
The dinner-hour has come. 

I. 

When the dock-hands, leaving off work, scatter 
along the haven in noisy groups, buying something 
to eat from the costermonger women and sitting down 
to their meal in the most shady corners of the 
macadamized quay, amidst them appears Greg 
Chelkash, that old wolf of the pastures, well-known to 
the people of the haven as a confirmed toper and a 
bold and skilful thief. He is barefooted, in shabby 
old plush breeches, hatless, with a dirty cotton shirt 
with a torn collar, exposing his mobile, withered, 
knobbly legs in their cinnamon-brown case of skin. 
It is plain from his touzled black, grey-streaked hair 
and his keen wizened face that he has only just awoke. 
From one of his smutty moustaches a wisp of straw 
sticks out, the fellow to it has lost itself among the 
bristles of his recently shaved left cheek, and behind 
his ear he has stuck a tiny linden twig just plucked 


CHELKASH. 


199 


from the tree. Lanky, bony, and somewhat crooked, 
he slowly shambled along the stones, and moving 
from side to side his hooked nose, which resembled 
the beak of a bird of prey, he cast around him sharp 
glances, twinkling at the same time his cold grey eyes 
as they searched for someone or other among the 
dockyard men. His dirty brown moustaches, long 
and thick, twitched just like a cat’s whiskers, and his 
arms, folded behind his back, rubbed one against the 
other, while the long, crooked, hook-like fingers 
clutched at the air convulsively. Even here, in the 
midst of a hundred such ragged striking tatter- 
demalions as he, he immediately attracted attention 
by his resemblance to the vulture of the steppes, by 
his bird-of-prey like haggardness, and that alert sort 
of gait, easy and quiet in appearance, but inwardly 
the result of excited wariness, like the flight of the 
bird of prey he called to mind. 

When he came alongside one of the groups of 
ragged porters sprawling in the shade beneath the 
shelter of the coal baskets, he suddenly encountered 
a broad-shouldered little fellow with a stupid pimply 
face and a neck scarred with scratches, evidently 
fresh from a sound and quite recent drubbing. He 
got up and joined Chelkash, saying to him in a 
subdued voice : 

“ Goods belonging to the fleet have been missed 
in two places. They are searching for them still. 
Do you hear, Greg ! ” 


200 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ Well ! ” asked Chelkash quietly, calmly measuring 
his comrade from head to foot. 

“ What do you mean by well ? They’re searching 
I say, that’s all.” 

“ Are they asking me to help them in their search 
then ? ” 

And Chelkash, with a shrewd smile, glanced in the 
direction of the lofty packhouse of the Volunteer 
Fleet. 

“ Go to the devil ! ” 

His comrade turned back. 

“ Wait a bit ! What are you so stuck-up about ? f 
Look how they’ve spoiled the whole show ! I don’t 
see Mike here ! ” 

“ Haven’t seen him for a long time,” said the other, 
going back to his companions. 

Chelkash went on further, greeted by everyone like 
a man well-known. And he, always merry with a 
biting repartee, to-day was evidently not in a good 
humour, and gave abrupt and snappy answers. 

At one point a custom-house officer, a dusty, dark- 
green man with the upright carriage of a soldier, 
emerged from behind a pile of goods. He barred 
Chelkash’s way, standing in front of him with a 
challenging pose and seizing with his left hand the 
handle of his dirk, tried to collar Chelkash with his 
right. 

“ Halt ! whither are you going ? ” 

Chelkash took a step backwards, raised his eyes to 


CHELKASH. 


201 


the level of the custom-house officer, and smiled 
drily. 

The ruddy, good-humouredly-cunning face of the 
official tried to assume a threatening look, puffing out 
its cheeks till they were round and bloated, contract- 
ing its brows and goggling its eyes — and was 
supremely ridiculous in consequence. 

“ You have been told that you are not to dare to 
enter the haven, or I’d break your ribs for you. And 
here you are again ! ” cried the guardian of the customs 
threateningly. 

“ Good day, Semenich ! we have not seen each 
other for a long time,” calmly replied Chelkash, 
stretching out his hand. 

“ I wish it had been a whole century. Be off! 
Be off!” 

But Semenich pressed the extended hand all the 
same. 

“ What a thing to say !” continued Chelkash, still 
retaining in his talon-like fingers the hand of 
Semenich, and shaking it in a friendly familiar sort 
of way — “ have you seen Mike by any chance? ” 

“ Mike, Mike ? whom do you mean ? I don’t 
know any Mike. Go away, my friend ! That pack- 
house officer is looking, he . . .” 

“ The red-haired chap, I mean, with whom I worked 
last time on board the ‘Kostroma,’” persisted 
Chelkash. 

“ With whom you pilfered, you ought to say. 


202 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


They’ve carried your Mike off to the hospital if you 
must know ; he injured his leg with a bit of iron. Go, 
my friend, while you are asked to go civilly ; go, and 
I’ll soon saddle you with him again ! ” 

“ Ah ! look there now ! and you said you did not 
know Mike ! Tell me now, Semenich, why are you 
so angry?” 

“ Look here, Greg ! none of your cheek ! be off ! ” 

The custom-house officer began to be angry, and 
glancing furtively around him, tried to tear his hand 
out of the powerful hand of Chelkash. Chelkash 
regarded him calmly from under his bushy brows, 
smiled to himself, and not releasing his hand, 
continued to speak : 

“ Don’t hurry me ! I’ll have my say with you and 
then I’ll go. Now tell me, how are you getting on ? — 
you wife, your children, are they well ? ” — and, twink- 
ling his eyes maliciously and biting his lips, with a 
mocking smile, he added : “ I was going to pay you 
a visit, but I never had the time — I was always on the 
booze ...” 

“Well, well, drop that! — none of your larks, you 
bony devil ! — I’m really your friend ... I suppose 
you’re laying yourself out to nab something under 
cover or in the streets ? ” 

“Why so? Here and now I tell you a good 
time’s coming for both you and me, if only we 
lay hold of a bit. In God’s name, Semenich, 
lay hold ! Listen now, again in two places goods are 


CHELKASH. 


203 


missing ! Look out now, Semenich, and be very 
cautious lest you come upon them somehow ! ” 

Utterly confused by the audacity of Chelkash, 
Semenich trembled all over, spat freely about him, 
and tried to say something. Chelkash let go his 
hand and calmly shuffled back to the dock gates with 
long strides, the custom-house officer, cursing fiercely, 
moved after him. 

Chelkash was now in a merry mood. He softly 
whistled through his teeth, and burying his hands 
into his breeches’ pockets, marched along with the 
easy gait of a free man, distributing sundry jests 
and repartees right and left. And the people he left 
behind paid him out in his own coin as he passed by. 

“ Hello, Chelkash ! how well the authorities mount 
guard over you ! ” howled someone from among the 
group of dock-workers who had already dined and 
were resting at full length on the ground. 

“ I’m barefooted you see, so Semenich follows 
behind so as not to tread upon my toes — he might 
hurt me and lay me up for a bit,” replied Chelkash. 

They reached the gates, two soldiers searched 
Chelkash and hustled him gently into the street. 

“ Don’t let him go ! ” bawled Semenich, stopping 
at the dockyard gate. 

Chelkash crossed the road and sat down on a post 
opposite the door of a pot-house. Out of the dock- 
yard gates, lowing as they went, proceeded an endless 
string of laden oxen, meeting the returning teams of 


204 TALES FROM GORKY. 

unladen oxen with their drivers mounted upon them. 
The haven vomited forth thunderous noise and sting- 
ing dust, and the ground trembled. 

Inured to this frantic hurly-burly, Chelkash, stimu- 
lated by the scene with Semenich, felt in the best of 
spirits. Before him smiled a solid piece of work, 
demanding not very much labour but a good deal of 
cunning. He was convinced that he would be equal 
to it, and blinking his eyes, fell thinking how he 
would lord it to-morrow morning, when the whole 
thing would have been managed and the bank-notes 
would be in his pocket. Then he called to mind his 
comrade Mike, who would have just done for this 
night’s job if he had not broken his leg. Chelkash 
cursed inwardly that, without Mike’s help, it would be 
a pretty stiffish job for him alone. What sort of a 
night was it going to be ? He looked up at the sky 
and then all down the street. . . 

Six paces away from him on the macadamized 
pavement, with his back against a post, sat a young 
lad in a blue striped shirt, hose to match, with bast 
shoes and a ragged red forage cap. Near him lay a 
small knapsack and a scythe without a handle wrapped 
up in straw carefully wound round with cord. The 
lad was broad-shouldered, sturdy, and fair-haired, 
with a tanned and weather-beaten face, and with 
large blue eyes gazing at Chelkash confidingly and 
good-naturedly. . i 

Chelkash ground his teeth, protruded his tongue. 


CHELKASH. 


205 


and making a frightful grimace, set himself to gaze 
fixedly at the youth with goggling eyes. 

The youth, doubtful, at first, what to make of it, 
blinked a good deal, but suddenly bursting into a fit 
of laughter, screamed in the midst of his laughter : 

“ Ah, what a character ! ” and scarce rising from the 
ground, rolled clumsily from his own to Chelkash’s 
post, dragging his knapsack along through the dust 
and striking the blade of the scythe against a stone. 

“What, brother, enjoying yourself, eh? Good 
health to you ! ” said he to Chelkash, plucking his 
trouser. 

“ There’s a job on hand, my sucking pig, and such 
a job!” confessed Chelkash openly. He liked the 
look of this wholesome, good-natured lad with the 
childish blue eyes. “ Been a mowing, eh ? ” 

“ Pretty mowing ! Mow a furlong and earn a 
farthing ! Bad business that ! The very hungriest 
come crowding in, and they lower wages though 
they don’t gain any. They pay six griveniki* in 
the Kuban here — a pretty wage ! Formerly they 
paid, people say, three silver roubles, four, nay five ! ” 

“Formerly! — Ah, formerly, at the mere sight of 
a Russian man they paid up splendidly there. I 
worked at the same job myself ten years ago. You 
went up to the cossack station — here am I, a Russian !. 

* A grivenik is a 10 kopeck piece = A>*h of a silver rouble. A 
silver rouble = 2s. 


206 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


you said, and immediately they looked at you, felt 
you, marvelled at you, and — three roubles down into 
your palm straightway ! Those were the days for eat- 
ing and drinking. And you lived pretty much as you 
liked.” 

The lad listened to Chelkash at first with wide- 
open mouth, with puzzled rapture writ large on his 
rotund physiognomy ; but, presently, understanding 
that this ragamuffin was joking, he closed his lips 
with a snap and laughed aloud. Chelkash preserved 
a serious countenance, concealing his smile in his 
moustaches. 

“ Rum card that you are ! you spoke as if it were 
true, and 1 listened and believed you. Now, God 
knows, formerly . . .” 

“ But I count for something, don’t I ? I tell you 
that formerly . . .” 

“ Go along ! ” said the lad, waving his hand. “ I 
•suppose you’re a cobbler ? — or are you a tailor ? 
What are you ? ” 

“ What am I ? ” repeated Chelkash, reflecting a 
little — “ I’m a fisherman ! ” he said at last. 

“ A fisherman ! really ? — you really catch fish ? ” 

“ Why fish ? The fishermen here don’t only catch 
fish. There’s more than that. There are drowned 
■corpses, old anchors, sunken ships — everything ! 
There are hooks for fishing up all sorts . . 

“ Nonsense, nonsense ! I suppose you mean the 
sort of fishermen who sang of themselves : 


CHELKASH. 


207 


u * Our nets we cast forth abroad 
On the river bank so high, 

And in storehouse and grain loft so high . . 

“And you have seen such like, eh?” inquired 
Chelkash, looking at him with a smile and thinking 
to himself that this fine young chap was really very 
stupid. 

“ No, where could I see them ? But I’ve heard of 
them 4 

“ Like the life, eh ? ” 

“ Like their life ? Well, how shall I put it ? — they 
are not bothered with kids . . , they live as they 
like . . . they are free . . 

“ What do you know about freedom ? Do you 
love it ? ” 

u Why of course. To be your own master . . . 
to go where you like ... to do what you like. Still 
more, if you know how to keep straight, and have no 
stone about your neck . . . then it’s splendid ! You 
may enjoy yourself as you like, if only you don’t 
forget God . . .” 

Chelkash spat contemptuously, ceased from ques- 
tioning, and turned away from the youth. 

“ I’ll tell you my story,” said the other with a 
sudden burst of confidence. “ When my father died 
he left but little, my mother was old, the land was all 
ploughed to death, what was I to do ? Live I must — 
but how? I didn’t know. I went to my wife’s 


208 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


relations — a good house. Very well ! ‘ Will you give 

your daughter her portion ? * But no, my devil of 
a father-in-law would not shell out. I was worrying 
him a long time about it — a whole year. What a 
business it was ! And if I had had a hundred and 
fifty roubles in hand I could have paid off the Jew 
Antipas and stood on my legs again. * Will you give 
Marfa her portion?’ I said. ‘No? Very well! 
Thank God she is not the only girl in the village.’ I 
wanted to let him know that I would be my own 
master and quite free. Heigh-ho ! ” And the young 
fellow sighed. “ And now there is nothing for it but 
to go to my relations after all. I had thought : look 
now! I’ll go to the Kuban District. I’ll scrape 
together two hundred roubles — and then I shall be a 
gentleman at large. But it was only so-so ! It all 
ended in smoke. Now you’ll have to go back to 
your relations, I said to myself ... as a day- 
labourer. I’m not fit to be my own master — no, I’m 
quite unfit. Alas! Alas!” 

The young fellow had a violent disinclination to 
go to his relatives. Even his cheerful face grew dark 
and made itself miserable. He shifted heavily about 
on the ground, and drew Chelkash out of the reverie 
in which he had plunged while the other was talking. 

Chelkash also began to feel that the conversation 
was boring him, yet, for all that, he asked a few more 
questions : 

“ And now where are you going ? ” 


CHELKASH. 


209 


“ Where am I going ? Why, home of course.” 

“ My friend, it is not ‘ of course * to me. You might 
be going to kick up your heels in Turkey for ought I 
know.” 

“ In Tur-tur-key ? ” stammered the youth. “ Who 
of all the Orthodox would think of going 
there ? What do you mean ? ” 

“ I mean that you’re a fool ! ” sighed Chelkash, 
and again he turned away from the speaker, and this 
time he felt an utter disinclination to waste another 
word upon him. There was something in this healthy 
country lad which revolted him. 

A troublesome, slowly ripening irritating feeling 
was stirring somewhere deep within him, and pre- 
vented him from concentrating his attention and 
meditating on all that had to be done that night. 

The snubbed young rustic kept murmuring to 
himself in a low voice, now and then glancing 
furtively at the vagabond. His cheeks were absurdly 
chubby, his lips were parted, and his lackadaisical 
eyes blinked ridiculously and preposterously often. 
Evidently he had never expected that his conver- 
sation with this moustached ragamuffin would have 
been terminated so quickly and so offensively. 

The ragamuffin no longer paid him the slightest 
attention. He was whistling reflectively as he sat on 
the post and beating time with his naked dirty paw. 

The rustic wanted to be quits with him. 

41 1 say, fisherman, do you often get drunk ? ” — he 

O 


210 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


was beginning, when the same instant the fisherman 
turned round quickly face to face with him and 
asked : 

“ Hark ye, babby ! Will you work with me to- 
night ? Come ! — yes or no ? ” 

“ Work at what ? ” inquired the rustic suspiciously. 

“ At whatever work I give you. We’ll go a fishing. 
You’ll have to row ...” 

“ Oh ! . . . All right ! . . . No matter. I can 
work. Only don’t let me in for something . . . 
You’re so frightfully double-tongued . . . you’re a 
dark horse ...” 

Chelkash began to feel something of the nature of 
a gangrened wound in his breast, and murmured with 
cold maliciousness : 

“No blabbing, whatever you may think. Look 
now, I’ve a good mind to knock your blockhead about 
till I drive some light into it.” 

He leaped from his post, and while his left hand 
still twirled his moustache, he clenched his right into 
a muscular fist as hard as iron, while his eyes flashed 
and sparkled. 

The rustic was terrified. He quickly looked about 
him, and timidly blinking his eyes, also leapt from the 
ground. They both stood there regarding each other 
in silence. 

“Well?” inquired Chelkash sullenly, he was boil- 
ing over and tremulous at the insult received from 
this young bull-calf, whom during the whole course of 


CHELKASH. 


2 1 1 


their conversation he had despised, but whom he now 
thoroughly hated because he had such clear blue eyes, 
such a healthy sun-burnt face, such short strong 
arms. He hated him, moreover, because, somewhere 
or other, he had his native village, and a house in it, 
and because he numbered among his relatives a well- 
to-do peasant farmer ; he hated him for all his past 
life and all his life to come, and, more than all this, 
he hated him because this creature, a mere child in 
comparison with himself, Chelkash, dared to love 
freedom, whose value he knew not, and which was 
quite unnecessary to him. It is always unpleasant to 
see a man whom you regard as worse and lower than 
yourself, love or hate the same thing as you do, and 
thus become like unto yourself. 

The rustic looked at Chelkash, and felt that in him 
he had found his master. 

“ Well ...” he began, “ I have nothing to say 
against it. I am glad, in fact . . . You see I am 

out of work. It is all one to me whom I work for, 
for you or another. I only mean to say that you 
don’t look like a working man . i . you’re so terribly 
ragged, you know. Well, I know that may happen 
to us all. Lord ! the topers I’ve seen in my time ! 
No end to ’em ! But I’ve never seen any like you.” 

“All right, all right! It is agreed then, eh?” 
asked Chelkash. His voice was now a little softer. 

“ With pleasure, so far as I am concerned. What’s 
the pay ? ” 


212 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ I pay according to the amount of work done, and 
according to the kind of work too. It depends upon 
the haul. You might get a fifth part — what do you 
say to that ? ” 

But now it was a matter of money, and therefore the 
peasant must needs be exact and demand the same 
exactness from his employer. The rustic had a fresh 
access of uncertainty and suspicion. 

“Nay, brother, ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in 
the bush 

Chelkash fell in with his humour. 

“No more gabble ! Wait ! come to the pub ! ” 

And they walked along the street side by side, 
Chelkash twisting his moustaches with the impu- 
dent air of a master, the rustic with the expression 
of a complete readiness to buckle under, yet at the 
same time full of uneasiness and suspicion. 

“ What do they call you ? ” inquired Chelkash. 

“ Gabriel,” replied the rustic. 

When they came to the filthy and smoke-black 
inn, Chelkash, going up to the buffet with the familiar 
tone of an old habitu^, ordered a bottle of vodka, 
cabbage-soup, a roasted joint, tea ; and totting up 
the amount of the items, curtly remarked to the 
barmaid : “ All to my account, eh ? ” whereupon the 
barmaid nodded her head in silence. And Gabriel 
was suddenly filled with a profound respect for his 
master, who, notwithstanding his hang-dog look, 
enjoyed such notoriety and credit. 


CHE LK ASH. 


213 


“Well, now we can peck a bit, and have a talk 
comfortably. You sit here. I’ll be back directly.” 

Out he went. Gabriel looked about him. The 
inn was on the ground-floor, it was damp and dark, 
and full of the stifling odour of distilled vodka, 
tobacco smoke, tar, and a something else of a pun- 
gent quality. Opposite Gabriel, at another table, 
sat a drunken man in sailor’s costume, with a red 
beard, all covered with coal dust and tar. He was 
growling, in the midst of momentary hiccoughs, a 
song, or rather the fragmentary and inconsecutive 
words of a song, his voice now rising to a frightful 
bellow, now sinking to a throaty gurgle. He was 
obviously not a Russian. 

Behind him sat two young Moldavian girls, ragged, 
dark-haired, sun-burnt, also screeching some sort of a 
song with tipsy voices. 

Further back other figures projected from the 
surrounding gloom, all of them strangely unkempt, 
half-drunk, noisy, and restless . . . 

Gabriel felt uncomfortable sitting there all alone. 
He wished his master would return sooner. The din 
of the eating-house blended into a single note, and it 
seemed to him like the roar of some huge animal. It 
possessed a hundred different sorts of voices, and was 
blindly, irritably, soaring away out of this stony 
prison, as if it wanted to find an outlet for its will 
and could not . . . Gabriel felt as if something 

bemused and oppressive was sucking away in his 


214 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


body, something which made his head swim, and 
made his eyes grow dim as they wandered, curious 
and terrified, about the eating-house. 

Chelkash now arrived, and they began to eat and 
drink and converse at the same time. At the third 
rummer Gabriel got drunk. He felt merry, and 
wanted to say something pleasant to his host who 
— glorious youth ! — though nothing to look at, was so 
tastefully entertaining him. But the words, whole 
waves of them, pouring into his very throat, for some 
reason or other wouldn’t leave his tongue, which had 
suddenly grown quite cumbersome. 

Chelkash looked at him, and said with a derisive 
smile: “Why, you’re drunk already! What a 
milksop ! And only the fifth glass too ! How will 
you manage to work ? ” 

“My friend,” lisped Gabriel, “never fear. I 
respect you — there you are. Let me kiss you. 
Ah!” 

“ Well, well — come, chink glasses once more.” 

Gabriel went on drinking, and arrived at last at 
that stage when to his eyes everything began to 
vibrate with a regular spontaneous motion of its 
own. This was very disagreeable, and made him 
feel unwell. His face assumed a foolishly-ecstatic 
expression. He tried to say something, but only 
made a ridiculous noise with his lips and bellowed. 
Chelkash continued to gaze fixedly at him as if he 
was trying to recollect something, and twirled his 


CHELKASH. 


215 


moustaches, smiling all the time, but now his smile 
was grim and evil. 

The eating-house was a babel of drunken voices. 
The red-haired sailor had gone to sleep with his 
elbows resting on the table. 

“ Come now, let us go,” said Chelkash, standing 
up. 

Gabriel tried to rise, but could not, and cursing 
loudly, began to laugh the senseless laugh of the 
drunkard. 

“ He’ll have to be carried,” said Chelkash, sitting 
down again on the chair opposite his comrade. 

Gabriel kept on laughing, and looked at his host 
with lack-lustre eyes. And the latter regarded him 
fixedly, keenly, and meditatively. He saw before 
him a man whose life had fallen into his vulpine 
paws. Chelkash felt that he could twist him round 
his little finger. He could break him in pieces like 
a bit of cardboard, or he could make a substantial 
peasant of him as solid as a picture in its frame. 
Feeling himself the other man’s master, he hugged 
himself with delight, and reflected that this rustic had 
never emptied so many glasses as Fate had permitted 
him, Chelkash, to do. And he had a sort of indignant 
pity for this young life ; he despised and even felt 
anxious about it, lest it should fall at some other 
time into such hands as his. And finally, all 
Chelkash’s feelings blended together into one single 
sentiment — into something paternal and hospitable. 


2l6 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


He was sorry for the youth, and the youth was 
necessary to him. Then Chelkash took Gabriel 
under the armpits, and urging him lightly forward 
from behind with his knee, led him out of the door of 
the tavern, where he placed him on the ground in the 
shadow of a pile of wood, and himself sat down beside 
him and smoked his pipe. Gabriel rolled about for a 
bit, bellowed drunkenly, and dozed off. 

II. 

" Well now, are you ready?” inquired Chelkash in 
a low voice of Gabriel, who was fumbling about with 
the oars. 

“ Wait a moment. The row-locks are all waggly. 
Can I ship oars for a bit ? ” 

“ No, no ! Don’t make a noise ! Press down more 
firmly with your hands, and they’ll fall into place of 
their own accord.” 

The pair of them were quietly making off with the 
skiff attached to the stern of one of a whole flotilla of 
sailing barques laden with batten rivets and large 
Turkish feluccas half unloaded and still half-filled 
with palm, sandal, and thick cypress-wood logs. 

The night was dark, across the sky dense layers of 
ragged cloud were flitting, and the water was still, 
dark, and as thick as oil. It exhaled a moist, saline 
aroma, and murmured caressingly as it splashed 
against the sides of the ships and against the shore. 


CHELKASH. 


217 


and rocked the skiff of Chelkash to and fro. 
Stretching a long distance seawards from the shore, 
rose the dark hulls of many vessels, piercing the sky 
with their sharp masts which had variegated lanterns 
in their tops. The sea reflected the lights of these 
lanterns, and was covered with a mass of yellow 
patches. They twinkled prettily on its soft, faint- 
black, velvet bosom, heaving so calmly, so power- 
fully. The sea was sleeping the sleep of a strong and 
healthy labourer wearied to death by the day’s work. 

“ Let’s be off,” said Gabriel, thrusting the oar into 
the water. 

“ Go ! ” Chelkash, with a powerful thrust of his 
hand, thrust the skiff right into the strip of water 
behind the barques. The skiff flew swiftly through 
the smooth water, and the water, beneath the stroke 
of the oars, burned with a bluish, phosphorescent 
radiance. A long ribbon of this radiance, faintly 
gleaming, tapered away from the keel of the skiff. 

“ Well, how’s the head ? Aching, eh ? ” inquired 
Chelkash jocosely. 

“ Frightfully. It hums like molten iron. I’ll wash 
it with water presently.” 

“Why? What you want is something to go 
inside. Take a pull at that — that will soon put you 
all right,” and he handed Gabriel a flask. 

“ Oh-ho ! Lord bless you ! ” 

A gentle gurgle was audible. 

“ How now ? Feel glad, eh ? Stop, that’ll do ! ” 


218 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


The skiff sped on again, lightly and noiselessly, 
turning and winding among the vessels. Suddenly 
it wrenched itself free from them, and the sea — the 
endless, mighty, glisteningisea — lay extended before 
them, receding into the blue distance, whence there 
arose out of its waters mountains of cloud of a dark 
lilac-blue, with yellowish downy fringes at the corners, 
and greenish clouds the colour of sea water, and those 
melancholy leaden clouds which cast abroad such 
heavy, oppressive shadows, crushing down mind and 
spirit. They crept so slowly away from one another, 
and now blending with, now pursuing one another, 
intermingled their shapes and colours, swallowing 
each other up and re-emerging in fresh shapes, mag- 
nificent and menacing. . . . And there was something 
mysterious in the gradual motion of these lifeless 
masses. There seemed to be an infinite host of 
them at the verge of the sea-shore, and it seemed as 
if they must always creep indifferently over the face 
of Heaven, with the sullen, evil aim of obliterating 
it, and never allowing it to shine down again upon 
the sleeping sea with its millions of golden eyes, 
the many-coloured living stars that sparkle so 
dreamily, awakening lofty desires in those to whom 
their pure and holy radiance is so precious. 

“ The sea’s good, ain’t it ? ” inquired Chelkash. 

“ Rubbish ! it’s horrible to me,” replied Gabriel, 
as his oars struck the water vigorously and symmetri- 
cally. The water plashed and gurgled with a scarcely 


CHELKASH. 


219 


audible sound beneath the strokes of the long oars 
— splashing and splashing, and sparkling with its 
warm blue phosphorescent light. 

“ Horrible ! do you say ? Ugh, you fool ! ” ex- 
claimed Chelkash contemptuously. 

He, thief and cynic, loved the sea. His excitable, 
nervous nature, greedy of new impressions, was never 
tired of contemplating that dark expanse, limitless, 
free, and mighty. And it offended him to receive 
such an answer to his question as to the loveliness 
of the thing he loved. Sitting in the stern, he cut the 
water with his oar, and looked calmly in front of him, 
full of the desire to go long and far in that velvety 
smoothness. 

On the sea there always arose within him a broad, 
warm feeling embracing his whole soul, and, for a 
time, purifying him from the filth of earthly life. 
This feeling he prized, and he loved to see himself 
better there, in the midst of the water and the air, where 
thoughts of life and life itself always lost first their 
keenness and then their value. At night on the sea 
can be heard the soft murmur of the sea’s slum- 
berous breathing, that incomprehensible sound which 
pours peace into the soul of man, and caressingly 
taming his evil impulses, awakes within him mighty 
musings. . . . 

“But where’s the tackle, eh?” inquired Gabriel 
suddenly, looking uneasily about the boat. 

Chelkash started violently. 


220 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ The tackle ? — it is with me in the stern of the 
boat.” 

“What sort of tackle is that?” Gabriel again 
inquired, this time with suspicion in his voice. 

“ What tackle ? Why, ground tackle and ” 

But Chelkash felt ashamed to lie to this youngster 
while concealing his real project, and he regretted the 
thoughts and feelings which the question of this rustic 
had suddenly annihilated. He grew angry. A 
familiar, sharp, burning sensation in his breast and 
throat convulsed him, and he said to Gabriel with 
suppressed fury : 

“Mind your own business, and don’t thrust your 
nose into other folk’s affairs. You are hired to row 
— so row. If your tongue wags again it will be the 
worse for you. Do you understand ? ” 

For a moment the skiff rocked to and fro, and stood 
still. The oars remained in the water feathering it, 
and Gabriel moved uneasily on his bench. 

“ Row ! ” 

Violent abuse shook the air. Gabriel grasped the 
oars. The skiff, as if terrified, fared along with quick, 
nervous jolts, noisily cutting through the water. 

“ Steadier ! ” 

Chelkash rose a little from his seat in the stern, 
without letting go his oar, and fixed his cold eyes on 
the pale face and trembling lips of Gabriel. Bending 
forward with arched back he resembled a cat about 
to spring. Perfectly audible was the savage grinding 


CHELKASH. 


221 


of his teeth, and also a timorous clattering as if of 
bones. 

“ Who calls ? ” resounded a surly shout from the sea. 

“ Devil take it ! — row, can’t you ? Quiet with the 
oars ! I’ll kill you, you hound ! Row, I say ! One, 
two! You dare to whisper, that’s all!” whispered 
Chelkash. 

“ Mother of God ! Holy Virgin ! ” whispered 
Gabriel, trembling and helpless with terror and 
over-exertion. 

The skiff turned and went lightly back towards the 
haven, where the lights of the lanterns were jogging 
together in a parti-coloured group, and the shafts of 
the masts were visible. 

“ Hie ! who was making that row?” the voice 
sounded again. This time it was further off than 
before. Chelkash felt easier. 

“ You’re making all the row yourself, my friend ! ” 
he cried in the direction of the voice, and then he 
turned again to Gabriel, who was still muttering a 
prayer: “Well, my friend, you’re in luck! If those 
devils had come after us there would have been an 
end of you! Do you hear? I’d have thrown you 
to the fishes in a twinkling ! ” 

Now when Chelkash spoke calmly, and even good- 
naturedly, Gabriel trembled still more with terror and 
fell to beseeching. 

" Listen ! Let me go ! For Christ’s sake let me 
go ! Land me somewhere — oh, oh, oh ! I’m ruined 


222 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


altogether. Now, in the name of God, let me go ! 
What am I to you? I’m not up to it. I’m not used 
to such things. It’s the very first time. Oh, Lord ! 
It’s all up with me ! How could you so deceive me, 
my friend? It is wilful of you. You have lost your 
soul. A pretty business.” 

“ What business do you mean ? ” asked Chelkash 
surlily. “ Ha ! What business, eh ? ” 

He was amused at the terror of the rustic, and he 
took a delight in Gabriel’s terror, because it showed 
what a terrible fellow he, Chelkash, was. 

“ A dark business, my friend ! Let me go, for God’s 
sake. What harm have I done you ? . . Mercy . . . !” 

“Silence! If you were of no use to me I would 
not have taken you. Do you understand? — And 
now be quiet ! ” 

“ Oh, Lord ! ” sighed the sobbing Gabriel. 

" Come, come ! Don’t blubber ! ” Chelkash 
rounded on him sternly. 

But Gabriel could no longer restrain himself, and 
sobbing softly, wept and snivelled and fidgeted on 
his seat, but rowed vigorously, desperately. The 
skiff sped along like a dart. Again the dark hulls of 
big vessels stood in their way, and the skiff lost itself 
among them, turning like a top in the narrow streaks 
of water between the vessels. 

“Hie you! Listen! If anyone asks you any- 
thing, hold your tongue, if you want to remain alive [ 
Do you understand ? ” 


CHELKASH. 


223 


“ Woe is me ! ” sighed Gabriel hopelessly in reply 
to the stern command, adding bitterly : “ My 
accursed luck ! ” 

“Now row! ” said Chelkash in an intense curdling 
whisper. 

At this whisper Gabriel lost all capacity for form- 
ing any ideas whatsoever, and became more dead 
than alive, benumbed by a cold presentiment of 
coming evil. He mechanically lowered his oars into 
the water, leaned back his uttermost, took a long 
pull, and set steadily to work again, gazing stolidly 
all the time at his bast shoes. 

The sleepy murmur of the waves had now a sullen 
sound and became terrible. They were in the 
haven . . . Behind its granite wall could be heard 
people’s voices, the splashing of water, singing, and 
high-pitched whistling. 

“ Stop ! ” whispered Chelkash. “ Ship oars ! cling 
close to the wall ! Hush, you devil ! ” 

Gabriel, grasping the slippery stones with his 
hands, drew the skiff up alongside the wall. The skiff 
moved without any grating, its keel gliding noiselessly 
over the slimy seaweed growing on the stones. 

“ Stop ! Give me the oars ! Give them here ! 
Where’s your passport ? In your knapsack ? Hand 
over the knapsack ! Come, look sharp ! It will be a 
good hostage for your not bolting! You’ll not bolt 
now, I know ! Without the oars you might bolt 
somewhere, but without the passport you’d be afraid 


224 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


to. Wait, and look here, if you whine — to the 
bottom of the sea you go ! ” 

And suddenly clinging to something with his 
hands, Chelkash rose in the air and disappeared over 
the wall. 

Gabriel trembled ... It was done so smartly. 
He began to feel the cursed oppression and terror 
which he felt in the presence of that evil moustached 
thief, rolling, creeping off him. Now was the time to 
run ! . . . With a sigh of relief he looked about 
him. To the left of him rose a black mastless hull, 
a sort of immense tomb, unpeopled and desolate. 
Every stroke of the billows against its side awoke 
within it a hollow, hollow echo, like a heavy sigh. 
To the right of him on the water, stretching right 
away, was the grey stony wall of the mole, like a cold 
and massive serpent. Behind, some black bodies were 
also visible, and in front, in the opening between the 
wall and the hull of the floating tomb, the sea was 
visible, dumb and dreary with black clouds all over it. 
Huge and heavy, they were moving slowly along, 
drawing their horror from the gloom and ready to 
stifle man beneath their heaviness. Everything was 
cold, black, and of evil omen. Gabriel felt terrified. 
This terror was worse than the terror inspired by 
Chelkash, it grasped the bosom of Gabriel in a strong 
embrace, made him collapse into a timid lump, and 
nailed him to the bench of the skiff. 

And around him all was silent, not a sound save 


CHELKASH. 


225 


the sighing of the sea, and it seemed as if this silence 
were broken upon by something terrible, something 
insanely loud, by something which shook the sea to 
its very foundation, tore asunder the heavy flocks of 
clouds in the sky, and scattered over the wilderness 
of the sea all those heavy vessels. The clouds crept 
along the sky just as gradually and wearyingly 
as before ; but more and more of them kept 
rising from the sea, and, looking at the sky, one might 
fancy that it also was a sea, but a sea in insurrection 
against and falling upon the other so slumberous, 
peaceful, and smooth. The clouds resembled billows 
pouring upon the earth with grey inwardly-curling 
crests ; they resembled an abyss, from which these 
billows were torn forth by the wind ; they resembled 
new-born breakers still covered with greenish foam of 
rage and frenzy. 

Gabriel felt himself overwhelmed by this murky 
silence and beauty ; he felt that he would like to see 
his master again soon. Why was he staying away 
there? The time passed slowly, more slowly even 
than the clouds crawling across the sky . . . And the 
silence as time went on became more and more 
ominous. But now from behind the wall of the mole 
a splashing, a rustling, and something like a whisper- 
ing became audible. It seemed to Gabriel as if he 
must die on the spot. 

“ Hie ! Are you asleep ? Catch hold ! ” sounded 
the hollow voice of Chelkash cautiously. 

P 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


ia6 

Something round and heavy was let down from the 
wall, Gabriel hauled it into the boat Another 
similar thing was let down. Then across the wall 
stretched the long lean figure of Chelkash, then from 
somewhither appeared the oars, Gabriel’s knapsack 
plumped down at his feet, and heavily breathing 
Chelkash was sitting in the stern. 

Gabriel looked at him and smiled joyfully and 
timidly. 

“ Tired ? ” he asked. 

“A bit, you calf! Come, take the oars and put 
your whole heart into it. A bit of work will do you 
no harm, my friend. The work’s half done, now 
we’ve only got to swim a bit under their very noses, 
and then you shall have your money and go to your 
Polly. You have a Polly, haven’t you ? Eh, baby ? ” 

Gabriel did his very utmost, working with a breast 
like shaggy fur and with arms like steel springs. The 
water foamed beneath the skiff, and the blue strip 
behind the stern now became broader. Gabriel was 
presently covered with sweat, but kept on rowing with 
all his might. Experiencing such terror twice in one 
night, he feared to experience it a third time, and 
only wished for one thing : to be quite out of this 
cursed work, land on terra firma , and run away from 
this man before he killed him downright, or got him 
locked up in jail. He resolved to hold no conver- 
sation with him, to contradict him in nothing, to do 
all he commanded, and if he were fortunate enough 


CHELKASH. 


227 


to break away from him, he vowed to offer up a 
prayer to St. Nicholas, the Wonder Worker, on the 
morrow. A passionate prayer was ready to pour 
from his breast . . . But he controlled him- 
self, panted like a steam-engine, and was silent, 
casting sidelong glances at Chelkash from time to 
time. 

And Chelkash, long, lean, leaning forward and 
resembling a bird ready to take to flight, glared into 
the gloom in front of the boat with his vulture eyes, 
and moving his hooked beak from side to side, with 
one hand held the tiller firmly, while with the other 
he stroked his moustache, his features convulsed 
occasionally by the smiles that curled his thin lips. 
Chelkash was satisfied with his success, with him- 
self, and with this rustic so terribly frightened by 
him, and now converted into his slave. He was 
enjoying in anticipation the spacious debauch of 
to-morrow, and now delighted in his power over this 
fresh young rustic impounded into his service. He saw 
how he was exerting himself, and he felt sorry for 
him, and wished to encourage him. 

“ Hie ! ” said he softly, with a smile, “ got over 
your funk, eh ? ” 

“ It was nothing ! ” sighed Gabriel, squirming 
before him. 

“ You needn’t lean so heavily on your oars now. 
Take it easy a bit. We've only got one more place 
to pass. Rest a bit.” 


228 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Gabriel stopped short obediently, wiped the sweat 
off his face with his shirt-sleeve, and again thrust the 
oars into the water. 

“ Row more gently. Don’t let the water blab 
about you ! We have only the gates to pass. Softly, 
softly! We’ve serious people to deal with here, my 
friend. They may take it into their heads to joke a 
bit with their rifles. They might saddle you with 
such a swelling on your forehead that you wouldn’t 
even be able to sing out : oh ! ” 

The skiff now crept along upon the water almost 
noiselessly. Only from the oars dripped blue drops 
and when they fell into the sea, tiny blue spots 
lingered for an instant on the place where they 
fell. The night grew even darker and stiller. The 
sky no longer resembled a sea in insurrection — the 
clouds had spread all over it and covered it with an 
even, heavy baldachin, drooping low and motionless 
over the sea. The sea grew still quieter, blacker, 
and exhaled a still stronger saline odour, nor did it 
seem so vast as heretofore. 

“ Ah ! if only the rain would come ! ” whispered 
Chelkash, “it would be as good as a curtain for 
us.” 

Right and left of them some sort of edifice now 
rose out of the black water — barges, immovable, 
sinister, and as black as the water itself. On one 
of them a fire was twinkling, and someone was 
going about with a lantern. The sea, washing their 


CHELKASH. 


229 


sides, sounded supplicatory and muffled, and they 
responded in a shrill and cold echo, as if quarrelsome 
and refusing to concede anything to it. 

“ The cordons ! ” whispered Chelkash in a scarcely 
audible voice. 

From the moment when he commanded Gabriel 
to row more gently, Gabriel was again dominated by 
a keen expectant tension. Onwards he kept, going 
through the gloom, and it seemed to him that he was 
growing — his bones and sinews were extending within 
him with a dull pain, his head, filled with a single 
thought, ached abominably, the skin on his back 
throbbed, and his feet were full of tiny, sharp, cold 
needles. His eyes were exhausted by gazing intently 
into the gloom, from which he expected to emerge 
every instant something which would cry to them 
with a hoarse voice : “ Stop, thieves ! ” 

Now, when Chelkash whispered, “ The cordons!” 
Gabriel trembled, a keen burning thought ran through 
him, and settled upon his over-strained nerves — he 
wanted to shout and call to people to help him. He 
had already opened his mouth, and, rising a little in 
the skiff, stuck out his breast, drew in a large volume 
of air, and opened his mouth . . . but suddenly, 
overcome by a feeling of terror which struck him like 
the lash of a whip, he closed his eyes and rolled off 
his bench. 

In front of the skiff, far away on the horizon out of 
the black water, arose an enormous fiery-blue sword, 


230 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


cutting athwart the night, gliding edgewise over the 
clouds on the sky, and lying on the bosom of the sea 
in a broad blue strip. There it lay, and into the zone 
of its radiance there floated out of the dark the 
hitherto invisible black vessels, all silent and en- 
shrouded in the thick night mists. It seemed as if 
they had lain for long at the bottom of the sea, 
drawn down thither by the mighty power of the 
tempest, and now behold ! they had risen from 
thence at the command of the fiery sea-born sword, 
risen to look at the sky and at all above the water. 
Their tackle hugged the masts, and seemed to be 
ends of seaweed risen from the depths together with 
these black giants immeshed within them. And again 
this strange gleaming blue sword arose from the sur- 
face of the sea, again it cut the night in twain, and 
flung itself in another direction. And again where 
it lay the dark hulls of vessels, invisible before its 
manifestation, floated out of the darkness. 

The skiff of Chelkash stood still and rocked to and 
fro on the water as if irresolute. Gabriel lay at the 
bottom of it, covering his face with his hands, and 
Chelkash poked him with the oars and whispered 
furiously, but quietly : 

“ Fool ! that’s the custom-house cruiser. That is 
the electric lantern. Get up, you blockhead. The 
light will be thrown upon us in a moment. What the 
devil ! you’ll ruin me as well as yourself if you don’t 
look out. Come ! ” 


CHELKASH. 


* 3 * 

And at last when one of the blows with the sharp 
end of the oar caught Gabriel more violently than 
the others on the spine, he leaped up, still fearing to 
open his eyes, sat on the bench, blindly grasped the 
oars, and again set the boat in motion. 

“ Not so much noise ! I’ll kill you, I will I Not so 
much noise, I say. What a fool you are ! Devil take 
you . . . What are you afraid of? Now then, ugly! 
The lantern is a mirror — that’s all ! Softly with the 
oars, silly devil ! They incline the mirror this way 
and that, and so light up the sea, in order that they 
may see whether folks like you and me, for instance, 
are sailing about anywhere. They do it to catch 
smugglers. They won’t tackle us — they'll sail far 
away. Don’t be afraid, clodhopper, they won’t 
tackle us. Now we’re clear . . .” Chelkash looked 
round triumphantly ... “At last we’ve sailed out 
of it ! Phew ! well you’re lucky, blockhead ! ” 

Gabriel kept silence, rowed and breathed heavily, 
still gazing furtively in the direction where that fiery 
sword kept on rising and falling. He could by no 
means believe Chelkash that it was only a lamp with 
a reflector. The cold blue gleam, cutting the darkness 
asunder and making the sea shine with a silvery 
radiance, had something incomprehensible in it, and 
Gabriel again fell into the hypnosis of anxious terror. 
And again a foreboding weighed heavily on his breast. 
He rowed like a machine, all huddled up, as if 
he expected a blow to come from above him ; and 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


232 

not a desire, not a single feeling remained in him 
— he was empty and spiritless. The agitation of 
this night had at last gnawed out of him every- 
thing human. 

But Chelkash triumphed once more, the whole 
thing was a complete success. His nerves, accus- 
tomed to excitement, were already placid again. His 
moustaches quivered with rapture, and a hungry 
little flame was burning in his eyes. He felt mag- 
nificent, whistled between his teeth, drew a deep 
inspiration of the moist air of the sea, glanced 
around, and smiled good-naturedly when his eyes 
rested on Gabriel. 

A breeze arose and awoke the sea, which suddenly 
began heaving sportively. The clouds seemed to 
make themselves thinner and more transparent, but 
the whole sky was obscured by them. Despite the 
fact that the wind, though but a light breeze, played 
over the sea, the clouds remained motionless, as if 
lost in some grey, grizzling meditation. 

“Come, friend, wake up! It’s high time. Why, 
you look as if your soul had evaporated through your 
skin, and only a bag of bones remained. Dear friend, 
I say! We’re pretty well at the end of this job, 
eh?” 

It was pleasant to Gabriel, at any rate, to hear a 
human voice, even if the speaker were Chelkash. 

“ I hear,” he said softly. 

“Very well, thick-head. Come now, take the 


CHELKASH. 


*33 


rudder, and I’ll have a go at the oars. You seem 
tired. Come ! ” 

Gabriel mechanically changed places. When 
Chelkash, in changing places with him, looked him in 
the face and observed that his tottering legs trembled 
beneath him, he was still sorrier for the lad. He 
patted him on the shoulder. 

“ Well, well, don’t be frightened. You have worked 
right well. I’ll richly reward you, my friend. What 
say you to a fiver, eh ? ” 

“ I want nothing. Put me ashore, that’s all.” 

Chelkash waved his hand, spat a bit, and began 
rowing, flinging the oars far back with his long arms. 

The sea was waking. It was playing with tiny 
billows, producing them, adorning them with a fringe 
of foam, bumping them together, and beating them 
into fine dust. The foam, in dissolving, hissed and 
spluttered — and everything around was full of a 
musical hubbub and splashing. The gloom seemed 
to have more life in it. 

“ Now, tell me,” said Chelkash, “ I suppose you’ll 
be off to your village, marry, plough up the soil, and 
sow corn, your wife will bear you children, and there 
won’t be food enough. Now, tell me, do you mean 
to go on working your heart out all your life long? 
Say! There’s not very much fun in that now, is 
there?” 

“ Fun indeed ! ” said Gabriel timidly and tremu- 
lously. 


*34 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Here and there the wind had penetrated the 
clouds, and between the gaps peeped forth little 
patches of blue sky, with one or two little stars in 
them. Reflected by the sportive sea, these little stars 
leaped up and down on the waters, now vanishing 
and now shining forth again. 

“ Move to the right,” said Chelkash ; “ we shall soon 
be there now, I hope. It’s over now. An important 
little job, too. Look now — it’s like this, d’ye hear? 
In one single night I’ve grabbed half a thousand. 
What do you think of that, eh ? ” 

“ Half a thousand ! ” gasped Gabriel incredulously, 
but then terror again seized him, and kicking the 
bundle in the skiff, he asked quickly, “ What sort of 
goods is this ? ” 

“ It's silk. Precious wares. If you sold all that at 
a fair price you would get a full thousand. But I’m 
not a shark ! Smart, eh ? ” 

“Ye-es!” gasped Gabriel. “If only it had been 
me,” he sighed, all at once thinking of his village, and 
his poor household, his necessities, his mother, and 
everything belonging to his home so far away, for the 
sake of which he had gone to seek work — for the sake 
of which he had endured such torments this very 
night. A wave of reminiscence overwhelmed him, 
and he bethought him of his little village running 
down the steep slope of the hill, down to the stream 
hidden among the birches, silver willows, mountain- 
ashes, and wild cherry-trees. These reminiscences 


CHELKASH. 


235 


suffused him with a warm sort of feeling, and put 
some heart into him. “ Ah ! it’s valuable, no doubt,” 
he sighed. 

“Well, it seems to me you’ll very soon be by your 
iron pot at home. How the girls at home will cotton 
to you ! You may pick and choose. No doubt your 
house is crazy enough just now . . . well, I sup- 

pose we want a little money to build it up again, 
just a little, eh . . ?” 

“ That’s true enough ... the house is in sore 
need — wood is so dear with us.” 

“Come now, how much? Old shanty wants 
repairing, eh ? How about a horse ? Got one ? ” 

“A horse? Oh, yes, there is one . . . but 

damned old.” 

“Well, you must have a horse, of course. . . . 

A jolly good ’un. . . . And a cow, I suppose 

. . . some sheep . . . fowls of different sorts, 

eh?” 

“ Don’t speak of it ! Ah ! if it could be so ! Ah ! 
Lord ! Lord ! then life would be something like.” 

“ Well, friend, life’s a poor thing in itself. ... I 
know something about it myself. I have my own 
little nest somewhere or other. My father was one 
of the richest in the village . . .” 

Chelkash rowed slowly. The skiff rocked upon the 
waves saucily splashing against her sides, scarcely 
moving upon the dark sea, and the sea sported ever 
more and more saucily. Two people were dreaming 


236 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


as they rocked upon the water, glancing pensively 
around them. Chelkash guided Gabriel’s thoughts to 
his village, wishing to encourage him a little and 
soothe him. At first he spoke, smiling sceptically to 
himself all the time ; but, presently, suggesting replies 
to his neighbour, and reminding him of the joys of a 
rustic life, as to which he himself had long been 
disillusioned, he forgot all about them, and remem- 
bered only the actual present, and wandered far away 
from his intention, so that instead of questioning the 
rustic about his village and its affairs, he insensibly 
fell to laying down the law to him on the subject. 

“The chief thing in the life of the peasant, my 
friend, is liberty. You are your own master. You 
have your house — not worth a farthing, perhaps — 
but still it is your own. You have your land — a 
mere handful, no doubt — still it is yours. You have 
your own hives, your own eggs, your own apples. 
You are king on your own land ! And then the regu- 
larity of it. Work calls you up in the morning — in 
spring one sort of work, in summer another sort of 
work, in autumn and in winter work again, but again 
of a different sort. Wherever you go, it is to your 
house that you always return — to warmth and quiet. 
You’re a king, you see. Ain’t it so?” concluded 
Chelkash enthusiastically, thus totting up the long 
category of rustic rights and privileges with the 
accompanying suggestion of corresponding obli- 
gations. 


CHELKASH. 


2 37 


Gabriel looked at him curiously, and also felt 
enthusiastic. During this conversation he had 
managed to forget whom he was having dealings 
with, and saw before him just such a peasant-farmer 
as himself, chained for ages to the soil through 
many generations, bound to it by the recollections 
of childhood, voluntarily separated from it and from 
its cares, and bearing the just punishment of this 
separation. 

“ Ah, brother ! true ! Ah, how true ! Look at 
yourself now. What are you now without the land ? 
Ah ! the land, my friend, is like a mother ; not for 
long do you forget her.” 

Chelkash fell a musing. He began to feel once 
more that irritating, burning sensation in his breast, 
that sensation which arose whenever his pride — the 
pride of the tireless adventurer — was wounded by 
something, especially by something which had no 
value in his eyes. 

“ Silence ! ” he cried savagely, “ no doubt you 
thought I meant all that seriously. Open your pouch 
a little wider.” 

“You’re a funny sort ol man,” said Gabriel, sud- 
denly grown timid again, “ as if I were speaking of 
you. I suppose there are lots like you. Alas ! what 
a lot of unhappy people there are in the world! 
. . . vagabonds who . . .” 

“Sit down, blockhead, and row,” commanded 
Chelkash curtly, bottling up within him, somehow 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


* 3 8 

or other, a whole stream of burning abuse gushing 
into his throat. 

Again they changed places, and as they did so 
Chelkash, as he crawled into the stern across the 
packages, felt a burning desire to give Gabriel a kick 
that would send him flying into the water, and at the 
same time could not muster up sufficient strength to 
look him in the face. 

The short dialogue broke off ; but now a breath of 
rusticity was wafted to Chelkash from the very silence 
of Gabriel. He began to think of the past, forgot to 
steer the boat, which was turned to and fro by the 
surge, and drifted seawards. The waves seemed to 
understand that this skiff had lost its purpose, and 
pitching her higher and higher, began lightly playing 
with her, flashing their friendly blue fire beneath her 
oars. And visions of the past rose quickly before 
Chelkash — visions of the long distant past, separated 
from his present purpose by a whole barrier of eleven 
years of a vagabond life. He succeeded in recalling 
himself as a child ; he saw before him his village, his 
mother, a red-cheeked, plump woman, with good grey 
eyes, his father, a red-bearded giant with a stern face. 
He saw himself a husband, he saw his wife, black- 
haired Anfisa, with a long pig-tail, full-bodied, gentle, 
merry . . . again he beheld himself, a handsome 

beau, a soldier in the Guards ; again he saw his father, 
grey-headed and crooked by labour, and his mother 
all wrinkled and inclining earthwards ; he conjured 


CHELKASH. 


2 39 


up, too, a picture of the meeting in the village when he 
returned from service ; he saw how proud of his 
Gregory his father was before the whole village, his 
broad-shouldered, vigorous, handsome soldier-son. . 
Memory, that scourge of the unlucky, revived the 
very stories of the past, and even distilled a few drops 
of honey into the proffered draught of venom — and 
all this, too, simply to crush a man with the con- 
sciousness of his mistakes, and make him love this 
past and deprive him of hope in the future. 

Chelkash felt himself fanned by the peaceful, 
friendly breezes of his native air, conveying with them 
to his ear the friendly words of his mother and the 
solid speeches of his sturdy peasant-father, and many 
forgotten sounds, and the sappy smell of his mother- 
earth, now just thawed, now just ploughed up, and 
now covered by the emerald-green silk of the winter 
crops. And he felt himself cast aside, rejected, 
wretched, and lonely, plucked forth from and flung for 
ever away from that order of life in which the blood 
that flowed in his veins had worked its way upwards. 

“Hie! whither are we going?” asked Gabriel 
suddenly. 

Chelkash started, and looked around with the un- 
easy glance of a bird of prey. 

“ Ugh ! The devil only knows ! It doesn’t matter 
. . . come, a steadier stroke! We shall be 

ashore immediately.” 

“ Meditating, eh ? ” inquired Gabriel with a smile. 


240 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


Chelkash looked at him angrily. The youth had 
quite recovered himself ; he was calm, merry, and, in a 
way, even triumphant. He was very young, he had 
the whole of life still before him. And he knew 
nothing. That was stupid. Perhaps it was the land 
that kept him back. When such thoughts flashed 
through the head of Chelkash, he became still surlier, 
and in reply to Gabriel’s question he growled : 

“ I was tired . . . and there was the rocking of 

the sea.” 

“Yes, it does rock . . . But now, suppose we 

are nabbed with that ? ” he asked, and he touched the 
parcels with his foot. 

“No fear . . . be easy! I’m going to hand them 
over immediately and get the money. Come ! ” 

“ Five hundred, eh ? ” 

“ Not much less, I should think.” 

“What a lot of money! If only it had come to a 
poor wretch like me ! I’d have sung a pretty song 
with it.” 

“In clodhopper fashion, eh ?” 

“ Nothing less. Why, I would straight off . . 

And Gabriel was carried away on the wings of 
his imagination. Chelkash seemed depressed. His 
moustaches hung down, his right side, sprinkled by 
the waves, was wet, his eyes were sunken, and had 
lost their brilliance. He was very miserable and 
depressed. All that was predatory in his appear- 
ance seemed to have been steeped in a lowering 


CHELKASH. 


241 


melancholy, which even came to light in the folds 
of his dirty shirt. 

" Tired, eh? and I’m so well . . . You’ve over- 
done it . . .” 

“ We shall be there in a moment . . . Look 1 

. . . yonder ! ” 

Chelkash turned the boat sharply round, and steered 
it in the direction of a black something emerging from 
the water. 

The sky was once more all covered with clouds, 
and rain had begun to descend — a fine, warm rain 
pattering merrily down on the crests of the waves. 

“ Stop ! slower ! ” commanded Chelkash. 

The nose of the skiff bumped against the hull of a 
barque. 

“ Are the devils asleep,” growled Chelkash, grasping 
with his boat-hook a rope dangling down the side of 
the ship . . . “ Why, the ladders not let down ! 

And it’s raining, too ! Why don’t they look sharp ! 
Hie! sluggards! hie!” 

“Is that Chelkash?” murmured a friendly voice 
above them. 

“Yes, let down the ladder.” 

“ How goes it, Chelkash ? ” 

“ Let down the ladder, you devil ! ” roared Chelkash. 

“ Oh, he’s waxy to-day, eh ? There you are, then * 

0 Up you go, Gabriel,” said Chelkash, turning t<> his 
companion. 

In a moment they were on the deck, where three 

Q 


242 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


dark-bearded figures, jabbering vigorously together in 
a strange pricky sort of tongue, were looking over- 
board into Chelkash’s skiff. The fourth, wrapped 
round in a long cloak, came to him and pressed 
his hand in silence, and then glanced suspiciously at 
Gabriel. 

“ Have the money ready by morning,” said Chelkash 
curtly. “And now I’ll have a little sleep. Come, 
Gabriel. Do you want anything to eat ? ” 

“ I should like to sleep,” replied Gabriel, and in a 
few moments he was snoring in the dirty hold of the 
ship ; but Chelkash, seated by his side, was fitting on 
gome sort of boot to his foot, and meditatively spitting 
about him* fell to whistling angrily and moodily 
through his teeth. Then he stretched himself along- 
side Gabriel, and without taking off his boots, folded 
his arms beneath his head, and began concentrating 
his attention on the deck, twisting his moustaches the 
while. 

The barque rocked slowly on the heaving water, 
now and then a plank gave forth a melancholy 
squeak, the rain fell softly on the deck, and the 
waves washed the sides of the vessel. It was all 
very mournful, and sounded like the cradle-song of a 
mother having no hope of the happiness of her son. 

Chelkash, grinding his teeth, raised his head a little, 
looked around him . . . and having whispered 

something, lay down again. . . . Stretching his 

legs wide, he resembled a large pair of shears. 


CHELKASH. 


*43 


III. 

He awoke first, gazed anxiously around, immedi- 
ately recovered his self-possession, and looked at the 
still sleeping Gabriel. He was sweetly snoring, and 
was smiling at something in his sleep with his childish, 
wholesome, sun-tanned face. Chelkash sighed, and 
climbed up the narrow rope ladder. Through the 
opening of the hold he caught sight of a leaden bit of 
sky. It was light, but grey and drear — autumnal in 
fact. 

Chelkash returned in about a couple of hours. His 
face was cheerful, his moustaches were twirled neatly 
upwards, a good-natured, merry smile was on his lips. 
He was dressed in long strong boots, a short jacket, 
leather trousers, and walked with a jaunty air. His 
whole costume was the worse for wear, but strong, and 
fitted him well, making his figure broader, hiding his 
boniness, and giving him a military air. 

“Hie! get up, blockhead!" bumping Gabriel with 
his foot. 

The latter started up, and not recognising him for 
sleepiness, gazed upon him with dull and terrified 
eyes. Chelkash laughed. 

“ Why, who would have known you ? ” said Gabriel 
at last, with a broad grin ; “ you have become quite a 
swell.” 

« Oh, with us that soon happens. Well, still in a 


244 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


funk, eh ? How many times did you think you were 
going to die last night, eh? Tell me, now.” 

“ Nay, but judge fairly. In the first place, what 
sort of a job was I on ? Why, I might have ruined 
my soul for ever ! ” 

“ Well, I should like it all over again. What do 
you say ? ” 

“Over again? Nay, that’s a little too . . . how 

shall I put it ? Is it worth it ? That’s where it is.” 

“ What, not for two rainbows ? ” 

“ Two hundred roubles you mean ? Not if I know 
it. Why, I ought . . .” 

“ Stop. How about ruining your soul, eh ? ” 

“Well, you see, I might . . . even if you 

didn’t,” smiled Gabriel ; “ instead of ruining yourself 
you’d be a made man for life, no doubt.” 

Chelkash laughed merrily. 

“All right, we must have our jokes, I suppose. Let 
us go ashore. Come, look sharp ! ” 

“ I’m ready.” 

And again they were in the skiff, Chelkash at the 
helm, Gabriel with the oars. Above them the grey sky 
was covered by a uniform carpet of clouds, and the 
turbid green sea sported with their skiff, noisily tossing 
it up and down on the still tiny billows, and sportively 
casting bright saline jets of water right into it. Far 
away along the prow of the skiff a yellow strip of 
sandy shore was visible, and far away behind the 
stern stretched the free, sportive sea, all broken up by 


CHELKASH. 


*45 


the hurrying heads of waves adorned here and there 
with fringes of white sparkling foam. There, too, 
far away, many vessels were visible, rocking on the 
bosom of the sea ; far away to the left was a whole 
forest of masts, and the white masses of the houses of 
the town. From thence a dull murmur flitted along 
the sea, thunderous, and at the same time blending 
with the splashing of the waves into a good and 
sonorous music. . . . And over everything was 

cast a fine web of ashen vapour, separating the various 
objects from each other. 

“ Ah, we shall have a nice time of it this evening," 
and Chelkash jerked his head towards the sea. 

“ A storm, eh ? ” inquired Gabriel, ploughing hard 
among the waves with his oars. He was already wet 
from head to foot from the scud carried across the sea 
by the wind. 

Chelkash grunted assent. 

Gabriel looked at him searchingly. 

“ How much did they give you ? ” he asked at last, 
perceiving that Chelkash was not inclined to begin 
the conversation. 

“ Look there," said Chelkash, extending towards 
Gabriel a small pouch which he had taken from his 
pocket. 

Gabriel saw the rainbow-coloured little bits of 
paper,* and everything he gazed upon assumed a 
bright rainbow tinge. 


* Bank-notes. 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


246 

“ You are a brick ! And here have I bee« 
thinking all the time that you would rob me. How 
much ? ” 

“ Five hundred and forty. Smart, eh ? ” 

“ S-s-smart ! ” stammered Gabriel, his greedy eyes 
running over the five hundred and forty roubles 
before they disappeared into the pocket again. “ Oh 
my ! what a lot of money ! ” — and he sighed as if a 
whole weight was upon his breast. 

“ We’ll have a drink together, clodhopper,” cried 
Chelkash enthusiastically. “Ah, we’ll have a good 
time. Don’t think I want to do you, my friend, I’ll 
give you your share. I’ll give you forty, eh? Is 
that enough for you ? If you like you shall have 
’em at once.” 

“ If it’s all the same to you — no offence — I’ll have 
’em then.” 

Gabriel was all tremulous with expectation, and 
not only with expectation, but with another acute 
sucking feeling which suddenly arose in his breast. 

“ Ha, ha, ha ! That’s like you ! What a tight- 
fisted devil you are ! I’ll take ’em now ! Well, take 
’em, my friend ; take ’em, I implore you. I really 
don’t know what I might do with such a lot of money. 
Relieve me of it ! Do take it I beg 1 ” 

Chelkash handed Gabriel some nice bank-notes. 
The latter seized them with a trembling hand, threw 
down the oars, and began concealing the cash some- 
where in his bosom, greedily screwing up his eyes and 


CHELKASH. 


*47 

noisily inhaling the air, as if he were drinking some- 
thing burning hot. Chelkash, with a sarcastic smile, 
observed him, but Gabriel soon took up the oars again, 
and rowed on nervously and hurriedly, as if afraid 
of something, and with his eyes cast down. His 
shoulders and ears were all twitching. 

“Ah, you’re greedy! Isn’t that good enough? 
What more do you want ? Just like a rustic ! ” said 
Chelkash pensively. 

“ Ah, with money one can do something,” cried 
Gabriel, suddenly exploding with passionate excite- 
ment. And gaspingly, hurriedly, as if pursuing 
his own thoughts and catching his words on the wing, 
he talked of life in the country, with money and 
without money, honour, contentment, liberty, and 
hilarity. 

Chelkash listened to him attentively with a serious 
face, and with eyes puckered with some idea or other. 
At times he smiled a complacent smile. 

“We have arrived!” cried Chelkash, at last 
interrupting the discourse of Gabriel. 

A wave caught the skiff and skilfully planted it on 
the strand. 

“ Well, my friend, here’s the end of the job. We 
must drag the boat a little further in shore that it 
may not be washed away. And then you and I will 
say good-bye. It is eight versts from here to the 
town. What are you going to do ?— back to 
town, eh? 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


<48 

A sly, good-natured smile lit up the face of 
Chelkash, and he had all the appearance of a man 
meditating something very pleasant for himself and 
unexpected for Gabriel. Dipping his hand into his 
pocket he crinkled the bank-notes there. 

“No . . . I — I’m not going! I — I ..." Gabriel 
breathed heavily, as if struggling with something. 
Within him was raging a whole mob of desires, words, 
and feelings, mutually devouring each other and filling 
him as if with fire. 

Chelkash looked at him doubtfully. 

“ Why are you twisting about like that? ” 

“It’s because, because ...” But the face of 
Gabriel was burning red at one moment and deadly 
grey at another, and he was glued to the spot, 
now desiring to fall upon Chelkash, and now torn 
by other desires, the fulfilment of which was difficult 
for him. 

Chelkash did not know what to make of such a 
state of excitement in this rustic. He waited to see 
what would come of it. 

Gabriel began to laugh in an odd sort of way, it 
was more of a howl than a laugh. His head was 
lowered, the expression of his face Chelkash did not 
see, but the ears of Gabriel, alternately reddish and 
palish, were painfully prominent. 

“ Come, what the devil’s the matter,” said Chelkash, 
waving his hand, “have you fallen in love with me all 
at once? What’s up? You change colour like a 


CHELKASH. 


249 


wench. Sorry to part from me, eh ? Eh, blockhead ? 
Say what’s the matter with you, and I'll be off.” 

“ Going, are you ? ” shrieked Gabriel shrilly. 

The sandy and desolate shore trembled beneath 
his cry, and the yellow billows of sand, washed by the 
billows of the sea, seemed to undulate. Chelkash also 
trembled. Suddenly Gabriel bounded from his place, 
threw himself at the feet of Chelkash, embraced them 
with his arms, and turned towards him. Chelkash 
staggered, sat down heavily on the sand, gnashed his 
teeth, and cut the air sharply with his long arm, 
clenching his fist at the same time. But strike he 
could not, being stayed by the shamefaced suppli- 
cating whisper of Gabriel : 

“ Dear little pigeon . . . Give me . . . 

that money ! Give it to me, for Christ’s sake ! . . . 

What is it to you ? Why, it was gained in a single 
night ... in a single night ! ... It would 

take me years . . . Give it me . . . I’ll pray 
for you if you will ! Perpetually ... in three 
churches ... for the salvation of your soul ! 
Look now, you’d scatter it to the . . . winds 

. . I would put it into land. Oh, give it to me ! 

What is it to you ? . . . How can you prize it ? 

A single night . . . and you’re a rich man. Do 

w good act! You’re all but done for . . . You 

haven’t got your way to make. But I would . . . 

Oh ! give them to me ! ” 

Chelkash, alarmed, astonished, and offended, sat on 


250 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


the sand, leaning back, supporting himself on his 
arms ; he sat there in silence and fixed a terrible gaze 
on the rustic who had buried his head in his knees, 
sobbing as he whispered his petition. He repulsed 
him at last, leaped to his feet and, thrusting his hands 
into his pockets, flung the rainbow bank-notes to 
Gabriel. 

“There, you dog! Devour . . . !” he cried 

trembling with excitement, bitter sorrow and loathing 
for this greedy slave. And he felt himself a hero for 
thus throwing away the money. Reckless daring 
shone in his eyes and lit up his whole face. 

“ I was going to give you more of my own 
accord. I was a bit down in the mouth yesterday, 
and bethought me of my own village. I thought to 
myself : let us give this rustic a helping hand. 1 was 
waiting to see what you would do. If you asked you 
were to get nothing. And you! Ugh ! you miser! 
mean hound ! To think that it is possible so to lower 
oneself for money ! Fool ! Greedy devils the lot of 
you! Not to recollect yourself! To sell yourself 
for a fiver ! Ugh ! ” 

“ Dear little pigeon ! Christ save you ! Now I 
have got something ... a thousand ! Now I 
am rich ! ” cried Gabriel in his enthusiasm, all tremu- 
lous as he hid his money away in his bosom. “ Ah, 
you merciful one! Never will I forget it. . . 

Never ! . . . And I’ll make my wife and children 

pray for you.” 


CHELKASH, 


251 


Chelkash listened to his joyous cries, looked at his 
radiant face deformed by the rapture of greed, and he 
felt that he, thief, vagabond, and outcast though he 
was, never could be so greedy, so mean, so forgetful 
of his own dignity. Never would he be such a one ! 
And these thoughts and sensations, filling him with 
the consciousness of his large mindedness and non- 
chalance, held him fast to Gabriel by the sandy 
sea-shore. 

“ You have made me happy 1 ” shrieked Gabriel, 
and seizing the hand of Chelkash he pulled it towards 
his face. 

Chelkash was silent, and fleshed his teeth like a 
wolf. Gabriel continued to pour forth his heart to 
him : 

“ Do you know what was in my mind ? . . . 

We came here — I saw the money . . . Thinks I 

. . . Til fetch him one . . . you I meant 

. . . with the oar — c-c-crack ! The money’s mine 

and he . . . that’s you . . . goes into the 

sea . . . Who would ever light upon him ? And 

if they did find him they would never inquire how he 
was killed or who killed him . . . such a fellow 

as that ! He’s not the sort of man people make a 
fuss about ! . . . He’s no good at all in the 

world! Who would ever trouble about him? You 
see how . . 

“ Give up that money 1 ” howled Chelkash, seizing 
Gabriel by the throat. 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


2 5 2 

Gabriel tore himself away — the other hand of 
Chelkash twined round him like a serpent — there was 
the grating tear of a rent shirt, and Gabriel lay on 
the sands with senseless goggling eyes, with sprawl- 
ing feet and the tips of his outstretched fingers 
fumbling for air. Chelkash stiff, dry, and savage, 
with grinding teeth, laughed a bitter spasmodic laugh, 
and his moustaches twitched nervously on his clear- 
cut angular face. Never in his whole life had he felt 
so angry. 

“ What, you’re lucky, eh ? ” he inquired of Gabriel 
in the midst of his laughter, and turning his back 
upon him, went right away in the direction of the 
town. But he hadn’t gone a couple of yards when 
Gabriel, with his back arched like a cat, rose on 
one knee, and taking a wide sweep with his arm, 
threw after him a large stone, crying spitefully: 
“ Crack ! ” 

Chelkash yelled, put both his hands to the back of 
his head, tottered forward, turned towards Gabriel, 
and fell prone in the sand. Gabriel’s heart died 
away as he gazed at him. There he lay, and 
presently he moved his foot, tried to raise his 
head, and stretched himself, quivering like a bow- 
string. Then Gabriel set off running away in the 
direction of the misty shore, it was overhung by 
a shaggy black cloud, and was dark. The waves 
were roaring as they ran upon the sand, mingling 
with it and then running back again. The foam 


CHELKASH. 


253 


hissed, and the sea-scud was flying about in the 
air. 

The rain began to fall. At first there were but 
rare drops, but soon it poured down in torrents, 
descending from the sky in long thin jets, weaving a 
whole net of water-threads — a net suddenly hiding 
away within it the steppes and the sea, and removing 
them to an immense distance. Gabriel vanished 
behind it. For a long time nothing was visible 
except the rain, and the long lean man lying on the 
sand by the sea. But behold ! again from out of the 
rain emerged the running Gabriel ; he flew like a bird 
and, running towards Chelkash, fell down before 
him, and began to pull him about on the ground. 
His hands dipped into the warm red slime. He 
trembled and staggered back with a pale and stupid 
face. 

“ Brother ! get up ! do get up ! ” he whispered in the 
ear of Chelkash amidst the din of the sea. 

Chelkash came to himself and shoved Gabriel away, 
hoarsely exclaiming : “ Be off! ” 

“ Brother, forgive ! . . . the devil tempted me ! ” 
whispered the tremulous Gabriel, kissing Chelkash’s 
hand. 

“ Go ! Be off! ” growled the other. 

“Take the sin from my soul, my brother! 
Forgive ! ” 

“ Slope ! Go to the devil, I say ! ” cried Chelkash, 
and with an effort he sat up on the sand. His face 


*54 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


was pale and angry, his eyes were dull and half 
closed, as if he wanted to sleep. “ What more do 
you want ? You have done what you wanted to 
do ... So go ! Be off!” and he tried to kick the 
utterly woe-begone Gabriel, but could not, and would 
again have rolled over had not Gabriel held him up 
by embracing his shoulders. The face of Chelkash 
was now on a level with the face of Gabriel ; both 
were pale, pitiful, and odd-looking. 

“ Phew ! ” said Chelkash, and he spat full into the 
wide-open eyes of his workman. 

The latter gently wiped it off with his sleeve. 

“ What would you do ? Won’t you answer a word ? 
Forgive me, for Christ’s sake ! ” 

“ Ugh, you horror ! But you’ll never understand,” 
cried Chelkash contemptuously, dragging off his shirt 
from under his short jacket and proceeding to wrap 
it round his head in silence, save for the occasional 
gnashing of his teeth. “You have taken the notes, 
I suppose ? ” he muttered through his teeth. 

“ No, I’ve not taken them, my friend ! . . . I 

don’t want them . . . they’d do me harm ! ” 

Chelkash shoved his hand into the pocket of his 
jacket, drew out a bundle of money, put back again 
in his pocket a single rainbow note, and pitched all 
the rest at Gabriel. 

“ Take it and go ! ” 

“ I’ll not take it, my brother ... I cannot ! 
Forgive me ! ” 


CHELKASH. 


2 55 


“ Take it, I say ! ” roared Chelkash, rolling his eyes 
horribly. 

“ Forgive me . . . and then I’ll take it ! ’’ said 

Gabriel timidly, and fell on his knees before Chelkash 
on the grey sand, now saturated with rain. 

“ Take it, you monster ! ” said Chelkash confidently, 
and, with an effort, raising Gabriel’s head by the hair, 
he flung the money in his face. “ There, take it ! 
You shan’t work for me for nothing. Take it with- 
out fear! Don’t be ashamed of nearly killing a man. 
Nobody will bother about such as I, They’ll even 
thank you when they hear about it. Come, take 
it ! Nobody knows about your deed, and it’s worth 
a recompense. There you are ! ” 

Gabriel perceived that Chelkash was laughing at 
him, and his heart grew lighter. He grasped the 
money tightly in his hand. 

“But, brother, you forgive me, won’t you?" he 
inquired tearfully. 

“ What for, my brother ? ” said Chelkash in the 
9ame tone, rising to his feet and tottering a little. 
“What for? For nothing at all. To-day it’s your 
turn, to-morrow mine.” 

“ Alas, my brother, my brother ! ” sobbed the 
afflicted Gabriel, shaking his head. 

Chelkash stood in front of him with a strange 
smile, and the rag round his head, now slightly 
tinged with red, bore some resemblance to a Turkish 
fee. 


256 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


The rain was pouring down as if from a bucket. 
The sea raged with a muffled roar, and the waves 
now beat upon the shore with frantic rage. 

For a time both men were silent. 

“ Well, good-bye ! ” said Chelkash coldly and sar- 
castically, and set off on his journey. 

He staggered as he went, his feet tottered beneath 
him, and he held his head so oddly, just as if he were 
afraid of losing it. 

“ Forgive me, brother ! ” Gabriel besought him 
once more. 

“ Bosh ! ” coldly replied Chelkash, pursuing his 
way. 

On he staggered, supporting his head all the time 
in the palm of his left hand, while with his right he 
gently twirled his fierce moustache. 

Gabriel continued to gaze after him till he dis- 
appeared in the rain, which was now pouring down 
more densely than ever from the clouds in fine end- 
less jets, enveloping the steppe in an impenetrable 
mist of a steely hue. 

Then Gabriel took off his wet cap, crossed him- 
self, looked at the money fast squeezed in his palm, 
sighed deeply and freely, hid the notes in his bosom, 
and with a spacious confident stride marched off 
along the sea-shore in the direction opposite to that 
in which Chelkash had vanished. 

The sea howled, and cast huge heavy waves on the 
strand, churning them up into foam and scud. The 


CHELKASH. 


257 


rain cut up sea and land furiously. Everything 
around was filled with howling, yelling, moaning. 
Neither sea nor sky was visible behind the rain. 

Soon the rain and the wash of the waves had 
cleansed the red spot on the place where Chelkash 
had lain, had washed away all traces of Chelkash, 
and all traces of the young rustic from the sand of 
the sea-shore. And on the desolate strand nothing 
remained as a memorial of the petty drama played 
there by two living souls. 


R 


IX.— CHUMS. 


I. 

One of them was called Jig- Leg, and the other 
Hopeful, and they were thieves by profession. 

They lived on the outskirts of the town, in the 
suburb that straggled strangely along the gully, in 
one of those crazy shanties compounded of clay and 
half-rotten wood — probably the rubbish sweepings 
chucked down the gully. The chums went a-thieving 
in the villages adjoining the town, for in the town 
itself it was difficult to thieve, and their neighbours 
in the suburb were not worth robbing. 

Both of them were cautious, modest chaps — they 
were not above appropriating a piece of cloth, a 
peasant’s coarse coat, or an axe, a bit of harness, a 
shirt, or a hen, and they always gave a very wide 
berth for a very long time to any village where they 
happened to “cop” anything. But despite such a 
sensible mode of procedure, the suburban muzhiks 
knew them very well, and occasionally threatened to 
beat them to death. But the muzhiks, so far, had 
never got their opportunity, and the bones of the two 
friends were still whole, though they had followed 


CHUMS. 


259 


their profession and heard the threats of the muzhiks 
for quite six years. 

Jig-Leg was a man of about forty years of age, tall, 
scraggy, haggard and muscular. He walked with his 
head bent earthwards, his long arms folded behind his 
back, with a leisurely but spacious stride, and, as he 
walked, he always glanced on every side of him with 
his restlessly keen and anxiously puckered-up eyes. 
The hair of his head he clipped short, his beard he 
shaved ; his thick, dark-grey, military moustaches hid 
his mouth, giving to his face a sort of grim and savage 
expression. His left leg must have been twisted or 
broken, and had grown in such a way as to become 
longer than the right leg. When he raised it as he 
strode along, it used to leap into the air and make a 
sweep sideways, and to this peculiarity of his gait he 
owed his nickname. 

Hopeful was five years younger than his comrade, 
not so tall, but broader in the shoulders. He fre- 
quently had a hollow cough, and his bony face, 
overgrown by a large black beard, streaked with 
grey, was a screen to his morbidly yellow complexion. 
His eyes were large and black, but they regarded 
everything amicably and deprecatingly. As he 
walked, he would press his thick lips together into 
the shape of a heart, and would softly whistle some 
song or other — a monotonous, melancholy song, always 
one and the same. A short garment of parti-coloured 
rags, with some resemblance to a wadding pea-jacket, 


2 6o 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


bobbed up and down on his shoulders ; but Jig- Leg 
always went about in a long grey kaftan, girded with 
a belt 

Hopeful was a peasant’s son, his companion the son 
of a sexton ; he had been a lackey and a billiard- 
marker. They were always seen together, and the 
peasants used to say of them, “ Here are the chums 
again . . . look at them both. Ah, the devils ! 

I wonder when they are going to croak.” 

The chums used to tramp along some village road, 
looking carefully about them, and avoiding any chance 
encounters. Hopeful would cough, and whistle his 
song ; and the leg of his comrade would fling into 
the air, as if attempting to wrench itself loose, and 
bolt away from the dangerous path of its master. Or 
they would lie about somewhere on the outskirts of a 
wood, amongst the rye, or in a gully, and quietly 
discuss how to set about stealing in order that they 
might have something to eat. 

II. 

In winter even the wolves, who are far better 
adapted for the struggle for life than our two friends, 
even the wolves have a bad time of it. Empty, 
ravenous, and fierce, they even run about the high- 
ways, and though we kill them we fear them. They 
have claws and teeth for self-defence, and — the main 
thing — their hearts are softened by nothing. This 


CHUMS. 


261 


last point is very important, for, in order to triumph 
in the struggle for existence, one ought to have much 
wisdom, or the heart of a beast. 

In the winter the chums also fared ill. Often in 
the evening they both went out into the streets of the 
town and begged for alms, trying at the same time to 
escape the notice of the police. Very rarely did they 
succeed in stealing anything ; it was inexpedient to 
go into the country because it was cold, and they left 
their traces in the snow ; besides, it was fruitless to 
visit the villages when everything in them was closed 
and covered with snow. The comrades lost much 
strength in the winter in their struggle with hunger, 
and possibly there was nobody who awaited the 
spring as eagerly as they did. 

And behold ! — at last spring arrived. The com- 
rades, sick and extenuated, emerged from their gully 
and looked joyously at the fields where the snow 
thawed more and more rapidly every day ; dark-brown 
patches began to appear everywhere, the meadows 
sparkled like mirrors, and the streams fell a babbling. 
The sun poured down his unselfish favours upon the 
earth, and the two friends warmed themselves in his 
rays, calculating at the same time how soon the earth 
would get dry, and then they might go and take 
pot-shots at luck among the villages. Frequently 
Hopeful, who suffered from sleeplessness, would 
awake his friend in the early morning with a piece of 
joyous intelligence : 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


262 

“ Hie ! get up ! the rooks are flying by ! ” 

“ Flying by, eh ? ” 

“ Yes, listen to their cawing ! ” 

Emerging from their wretched shanty, they watched 
the black heralds of the spring carefully building new 
nests or repairing old ones, and filling the air with 
their hoarse and anxious cawing. 

“Now it will be the turn of the larks,” said 
Hopeful, setting about mending his old and much 
worn bird-net. 

And now the larks also appeared. Then the 
chums went into the fields, spread their nets on one 
of the brown thawed patches, and running about in 
the moist and muddy fields, drove into the nets the 
hungry birds, who, wearied by their long flight, were 
seeking their food on the grey earth which had only 
just freed itself from the snow. On catching the 
birds they sold them at a pyatachek * or a grivenik f 
per head. Then the nettles appeared, which they 
gathered and carried to the bazaar for the market- 
garden huckster women. Nearly every day of the 
spring gave them something fresh to do, some fresh 
if but trifling bit of work. They could turn every- 
thing to some use : osiers, sorrel, mushrooms, straw- 
berries, fungi — nothing passed through their hands in 
vain. Sometimes the soldiers would come out for 
firing-practice. After the practice was over the 


A silver five kopeck piece, f A ten kopeck piece. 


CHUMS. 


263 


chums would ferret about the earthworks and fish 
up the bullets, which they would sell subsequently at 
twenty kopecks the pound. All these occupations cer- 
tainly prevented the chums from dying of hunger, 
but very rarely gave them the opportunity of eating 
their fill, rarely gave them the pleasant feeling of 
a full stomach working warmly away upon hastily 
swallowed food. 


III. 

Once in April when the country-side had only just 
began to put forth its buds and shoots, when the 
woods were still wrapped in a dark blue gloom, and 
the grass had only just begun to appear on the fat 
fields basking in the sun — the chums were going 
along the high-road smoking makharka * cigars of 
their own manufacture, and conversing. 

“ You are coughing worse than ever,” said Jig- Leg 
to his comrade in a tone of mild reproach. 

“ A fig for that ! Look ye, the dear little sun will 
soon warm me up — and I shall feel alive again.” 

“ H’m ! You may have to go into the hospital you 
know.” 

“What do I want with hospitals? If die I must, 
let me die ! ” 

“ Well, that’s true enough.” 

They were passing a tract of land planted with 


Coarse tobacco smoked by the peasants. 


264 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


birches, and the birches cast upon them the patterned 
shadows of their fine slender leaves. The sparrows 
were hopping along the road chirping merrily. 

“ You don’t walk very well,” remarked Jig-Leg 
after a moment’s silence. 

“ That’s because I have a choky feeling,” exclaimed 
Hopeful. “ The air is now thick and damp, it is a 
fat sort of air and I find it hard to swallow.” 

And stopping short, he fell a-coughing. 

Jig- Leg stood beside him, smoked away, and never 
took his eyes off him. Hopeful, shaken by his attack 
of coughing, held his bosom with his hands and his 
face grew blue. 

“ It gives my lungs a good tearing any way! ” said 
he, when he had ceased coughing. 

And on they went again after scaring away the 
sparrows. 

“ Now we are coming to Mukhina,” observed 
Jig-Leg, throwing away his cigarette, and spitting. 
“We must make a circuit round it at the back by 
the way of the outhouses, perhaps we may be able 
to pick up something. Then further on past the 
Sivtsova spinny to Kuznechikha . . . From 

Kuznechikha we’ll turn oflf towards Markvoka, and 
so home.” 

“ That will be a walk of thirty versts,” said Hopeful. 

“ May it not be in vain ! ” 

To the left of the road stood a wood uniformly 
dark and inhospitable, there was not a single patch 


CHXJMS. 


265 


of green amidst its naked branches to cheer the 
eye. On the outskirts of the wood a small, rough, 
shaggy little horse, with woefully fallen-in flanks was 
roaming, and its prominent ribs were as sharply 
defined as the hoops of a barrel. The chums stopped 
again and looked at it for a long time, watching how 
it slowly picked its way along, lowering its snout 
towards the ground, and cropping the herbage with 
its lips, carefully munching them with its worn-out 
yellow teeth. 

“ She’s starved too ! ” observed Hopeful. 

“ Gee-gee ! ” cried Jig-Leg enticingly. 

The horse looked at him, and shaking his head, 
negatively bent it earthwards again. 

Hopeful explained the horse’s wearisome move- 
ment : “ He doesn’t like you ! ” said he. 

“ Come ! If we hand him over to the gipsies, 
they no doubt will give us seven roubles for her,” 
observed Jig- Leg meditatively. 

“No they won’t ! What could they do with her ? ” 

“ There’s the hide ! ” 

“The hide? Do you suppose they’ll give as 
much as that for the hide ? Look at it ! What sort 
of a hide do you call that ? Why it isn’t equal to old 
shoe leather.” 

“ Well, they’d give something any way.” 

“ Yes, I suppose that’s true enough.” 

Jig- Leg looked at his comrade, and after a pause, 
said : 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“Well?” 

“ Awkward ...” replied Hopeful doubtfully. 

“ How ? ” 

“ We should leave tracks. The ground is damp 
. . . they could trace where we took it” 

“ We could put clouts on her feet.” 

“ As you like.” 

“ Come along ! Let’s drive her into the wood and 
pass the night in the gully. In the night we’ll bring 
her out and drive her to the gipsies. It’s not far — 
only three versts.” 

“Let’s go then,” said Hopeful, shaking his head. 
“ A bird in the bush you know . . . But suppose 

something comes of it ? ” 

“Nothing will come of it,” said Jig-Leg with 
conviction. 

They quitted the road, and after glancing carefully 
around them, entered the wood. The horse looked 
at them, snorted, waved her tail, and again fell to 
munching the withered grass. 

IV. 

At the bottom of the deep sylvan hollow it was 
dark, damp, and still. The murmuring of the stream 
was borne through the silence, monotonous and 
melancholy, like a lament. From the steep sides of 
the gully above waved the naked branches of the 
hazels, dwarf-cherries, and maples ; here and there the 


CHUMS. 


267 


roots of the trees, saturated with the spring water, 
projected helplessly out of the ground. The forest 
was still dead ; the gloom of evening magnified the 
lifeless monotony of its hues and the sad silence 
lurking within it which had something of the gloomy 
and triumphant repose of an old churchyard. 

The chums had already been sitting a long time 
there in the damp and silent gloom, beneath a group 
of aspens clustered together in a huge clump of earth 
at the bottom of the ravine. A tiny fire burnt 
brightly in front of them, and as they warmed their 
hands over it, they cast into it, from time to time, dry 
twigs and branches, taking care that the flame should 
burn evenly all the time, and that the fire should not 
give forth smoke. Not very far off stood the horse. 
They had wrapped her mouth round with a sleeve 
torn from the rags of Hopeful, and had fastened her 
by her bridle to the trunk of a tree. 

Hopeful, crouching down on his heels by the fire, 
was dreamily gazing at the flame and whistling his 
song ; his comrade, cutting away at a bunch of osier- 
twigs, was making a basket out of them, and his 
occupation kept him silent. 

The sad melody of the stream and the soft 
whistling of the unlucky man blended into one accord, 
and floated plaintively in the silence of the evening 
and the forest. Now and then some twigs on the fire 
would crackle, crackle and hiss, doubtless their way 
of sighing, as if they felt that life was more lingering 


268 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


than their death in the fire, and therefore more of a 
torment. 

" What do you say ? Shall we be going soon ? ” 
inquired Hopeful. 

“It’s early yet. Let it get quite dark and then 
we’ll go,” replied Jig-Leg, without raising his head 
from his work. 

Hopeful sighed and began to cough. 

" Frozen, eh?” inquired his companion after a long 
pause. 

“ N — n — no . . . Something makes me miser- 

able.” 

“ Let’s hear it ! ” and Jig-Leg shook his head. 

“ My heart is throbbing.” 

“ Sick, eh ? ” 

“ I suppose so . . . but it may be something 

else.” 

Jig- Leg was silent for a while and then he said : 

“ I say ! . . . don’t think ! ” 

“ Of what ? ” 

“ Of everything.” 

“Look here now” — Hopeful suddenly seemed to 
grow alive — “how can I help thinking? I look at 
her ” — he waved his hand towards the horse — “ I look 
at her and I understand — I had such a one also. She 
was a sorrel, and at all sorts of work-— first-class. 
Once upon a time I even had a pair of them — I 
worked right well in those days.” 

“What are you driving at?” asked Jig-Leg curtly 


CHUMS. 


269 


and coldly. “ I don’t like this sort of thing in you, 
you set up the bagpipes and begin to groan ! — what’s 
the good ? ” 

Hopeful silently threw into the fire a handful 
of twigs broken up small, and watched the sparks 
fly upwards and disappear in the damp air. His 
eyes blinked frequently, and shadows ran swiftly 
across his face. Presently he turned his head in 
the direction of the horse and gazed at her for a 
long time. 

The horse was standing motionless, as if rooted in 
the ground ; her head, distorted out of recognition by 
the wrapping, was hanging down. 

“ We must take a single-minded view of things,” 
said Jig- Leg, severely and emphatically, “our life — 
is a day and a night — twenty-four hours and that’s 
all ! If there’s food — well and good ; if there isn’t 
— well squeak and squeak as much as you like, 
you’d better leave off, for it does no good. And the 
way you went on just now isn’t nice to listen to. It’s 
because you’re sick, that’s what it is.” 

“It must be because I’m sick, I suppose,” agreed 
Hopeful meekly, but, after a brief silence, he added, 
“ But it may be owing to a weak heart.” 

“ And that’s because your heart is sick,” declared 
Jig-Leg categorically. 

He bit through the osier-twigs, waved them over 
his head, cut the air with a shrill whistle, and said 
severely : 


270 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“ I’m right enough you see — there’s nothing of that 
sort the matter with me.” 

The horse shifted from leg to leg ; a branch 
cracked somewhere ; some earth plumped into the 
stream, introducing some fresh notes into its quiet 
melody ; then from somewhither two little birds 
started up and flew along the gully, screeching 
uneasily. Hopeful followed them with his eyes 
and remarked quietly : 

“ What birds are those ? If they are starlings they 
have no business in this forest. They are mostly 
around dwelling-places. I suppose they are silk-tails* 

. . . lots of ’em about.” 

“ They may be cross-bills. ”f 

“ It’s too early for cross-bills, and besides, what 
does a cross-bill want in a fir-wood ? It has no 
business there. They can only be silk-tails.” 

“ All right — drop ’em.” 

“ Oh certainly ! ” agreed Hopeful, and he sighed 
heavily for some reason or other. 

The work in the hands of Jig- Leg progressed 
rapidly, he had already woven the bottom of the 
basket, and was skilfully making the sides. He cut 
the osiers with his knife, bit them through with 
his teeth, bent and twined them, and snorted from 
time to time whenever he gave a tug at his bristling 
moustaches. 

Hopeful looked sometimes at him, sometimes at 

* Bombycilla garrula. f Loxia curvirostra. 


CHUMS. 


271 


the horse, which seemed to have petrified into its 
dejected pose, and sometimes at the sky, already 
almost nocturnal, but without stars. 

“The muzhiks grab all the horses,” he suddenly 
remarked in a strange voice — “ and there are none left 
except here and there perhaps — so there are no more 
horses ! ” 

And Hopeful waved his arms about. His face was 
dull, and his eyes blinked as frequently as if he was 
looking at something bright blazing up before them. 

“What’s that to do with you?” asked Jig-Leg 
severely. 

“ I was calling to mind a story ...” said 
Hopeful guiltily. 

“ What story ? ” 

“Yes! . . . Just as it might be here . . . 
the same thing happened to my knowledge once 
. . . they took away a horse . . . from a 

neighbour of mine . . . Michael his name 

was . . . such a big muzhik he was . . . 
and pock-marked . . 

“Well?” 

“ Well, they took her away . . . She was 

browsing on the winter pastures — and all at once 
she was gone. When Michael understood that he 
was nagless, down he plumped on the ground, and 
how he howled! Ah, my little friend, how he did 
bellow then, to be sure ... it was just as if he 
had broken his leg . . .” 


2J2 


TALES FROM GORKY- 


“ Well?” 

“ Well . . . he was a long time like that.” 

“ And how do you come in ? ” 

At this sharp question from his comrade, Hopeful 
slunk away from him, and timidly answered : 

“Oh ... I only remembered it, that’s all 
For without his horse the muzhik is in a hole.” 

“I tell you what it is,” began Jig- Leg severely, 
looking Hopeful straight in the face, “chuck it, d’ye 
hear? There’s no sense in what you say, do you 
understand ? Michael, your neighbour, indeed ! 
What’s it got to do with you ? ” 

“Anyhow, it’s a pity,” objected Hopeful, shrugging 
his shoulders. 

“ A pity ! Good heavens ! and is there anyone who 
ever takes pity on us ? ” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ Shut up ! it will soon be time to go.” 

“ Soon ? ” 

“Yes.” 

Hopeful moved a little towards the fire, poked it 
with his stick, and looking askance at Jig- Leg, who 
was once more immersed in his work, said softly and 
beseechingly : 

“ Hadn’t we better let her* go ? ” 

“ It’s your low nature that makes you talk like 
that!” exclaimed Jig-Leg angrily. 


* The horse. 


CHUMS. 


373 


“ Nay, but for God’s sake listen ! ” persisted Hopeful 
softly, and with a tone of conviction. “Just think, 
there’s danger in it! Here we shall have to drag 
her along for four versts . . . And suppose the 

gipsies won’t take her ! — what then ? ” 

“ That’s my affair.” 

“As you like! Only it would be better to let 
her go. Let her go and slope. Look what a 
knacker she is ! ” 

Jig- Leg was silent, but his fingers moved more 
quickly than ever. 

“ How much would they give for her, I should like 
to know, in case they gave anything at all ? ” persisted 
Hopeful, quietly but stubbornly. “ And now it’s the 
best time. It will be dark immediately. If we go 
along the gully we shall come out at Dubenka. 
Let’s keep our eyes open, and we may be able to prig 
something or other.” 

The monotonous speech of Hopeful, blending with 
the gurgling of the stream, floated down the gully, 
and enraged the industrious Jig-Leg. 

He was silent, ground his teeth, and the osier- 
twigs broke beneath his fingers from sheer excite- 
ment. 

“ The women are bleaching their linen now.” 

The horse snorted loudly and became restive. 
Enwrapped by the mist, she now looked more 
monstrous and more wretched than ever. Jig-Leg 
looked at her and spat into the fire. 

S 


274 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“The cattle, too, are now at large . . . the 

geese are in the fields . . .” 

“ How long will it take you to spit it all out, you 
devil ? ” inquired Jig-Leg savagely. 

“ For heaven’s sake, Stephen, don’t be angry with 
me. Let her loose in the woods. It’s the right thing 
to do.” 

“Have you eaten anything to-day?” shrieked 
Jig-Leg. 

“ No,” replied Hopeful, confused and frightened by 
his comrade’s shout. 

“ Then, deuce take you, you may starve for all I 
care. I spit upon you.” 

Hopeful looked at him in silence, Jig-Leg, col- 
lecting the osiers together, bound them into a bundle, 
and snorted angrily. The reflection of the fire fell 
upon his face, and his face, with the bristling mous- 
taches, was red and angry. 

Hopeful turned away and sighed heavily. 

“ I spit upon such sentiments. I say — do as you 
like,” said Jig- Leg, hoarsely and viciously. “ But let 
me tell you this,” he went on, “if you go hedging 
like this any more, you are no company for me. 
To that I mean to stick. I know what you are, 
you . . .” 

“You’re an odd chap . . .” 

“No more tall talk.” 

Hopeful squirmed and coughed ; then after cough- 
ing his cough out, he sighed heavily. 


CHUMS. 


275 


"Do you know why I talk so much about it? 
Because it is dangerous.” 

"All right!” cried Jig-Leg angrily. 

He picked up the osier-twigs, flung them over his 
shoulder, shoved the unfinished basket under his arm, 
and rose to his feet. 

Hopeful also stood up, looked at his comrade, and 
softly approached the horse. 

"Wo-ah! Christ be with thee! Fear notl” his 
hollow voice resounded through the gully. 

" Wo-ah ! Stand still ! Well — go of your own 
accord — go along, then — there you are ! ” 

Jig- Leg watched his comrade pottering about the 
horse and unwinding the clout from its mouth, and 
the moustaches of the surly thief twitched with 
excitement. 

" Let’s be off,” said he, moving forwards. 

“ I’m coming,” said Hopeful. 

And forcing their way through the scrub, they went 
silently along the gully in the midst of the night 
darkness, which filled it to the very brim. 

The horse, too, came after them. 

Presently behind them they heard the splashing of 
water, which drowned the melody of the stream. 

" Ah, thou fool ! thou hast fallen into the water,” 
said Hopeful. 

Jig-Leg snorted angrily, but remained silent. 

In the dark, amidst the gloomy silence of the 
ravine, resounded the gentle crackling of twigs; 


276 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


the sound came floating along from the place where 
the red cluster of the embers of the fire sparkled on 
the ground like some monstrous and maliciously- 
mirthful eye. 

The moon arose. 

Her transparent radiance filled the ravine with a 
mist-like gloom ; the shadows fell on every side, 
making the forest all the denser, and the silence 
therein more complete and more austere. The white 
stems of the birches, silvered over by the moon, stood 
out like wax-candles against the darker ground of the 
oaks, elms, and brushwood. 

The chums walked along the bottom of the ravine 
in silence. It was hard going ; sometimes their feet 
stumbled, sometimes they sank deep in the mire. 
Hopeful frequently panted, and a whistling, wheezing, 
rattling sound came from his breast, just as if a lot of 
large clocks that had not been cleaned for a long time 
were stowed away there. Jig-Leg went in front, 
the shadow of his lofty and erect figure fell upon 
Hopeful. 

“ Look now ! ” said he, petulantly and sulkily ; 
“ where are we going ? What are we after ? Eh ? ” 

Hopeful groaned, and was silent. 

“ The night is now shorter than a sparrow’s beak, 
by daylight we shall come to the village, and how 
shall we do? It is just as if we were gentlemen at 
large taking a stroll.” 

“ I feel very bad, brother,” said Hopeful quietly. 


CHUMS. 


277 


“Very bad ! ” exclaimed Jig-Leg ironically ; “ there 
you are, of course ! How so ? ” 

“ I have great difficulty in breathing,” replied the 
sick thief. 

“In breathing? Why have you a great difficulty 
in breathing ? ” 

“ Because I am ill, 1 suppose.” 

“ You lie ! It is because you are stupid.” 

Jig- Leg stopped short, turned towards his comrade, 
and shaking his fingers beneath his nose, added : 

“Yes — you cannot breathe because of your stu- 
pidity. Do you understand ? ” 

Hopeful bowed his head low, and answered 
guiltily : 

“ Certainly ! ” 

He would have said something more, but began to 
cough instead, leaning on to the trunk of a tree with 
trembling hands ; and he coughed for a long time, 
trampling the ground without moving from the spot, 
shaking his head, and opening his mouth wide. 

Jig-Leg continued looking at his face, which stood 
out haggard, earthy and greenish in the light of the 
moon. 

“ You’ll awaken all the wood-sprites in the forest,” 
he said at last, surlily..' 

And when Hopeful had coughed himself out, and 
throwing back his head, groaned freely, he made a 
proposition to him in a dictatorial tone. 

“ Rest a bit. Sit down.” 


278 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


And they sat down on the damp earth in the 
shadow of the bushes. Jig- Leg made a cigarette, 
began smoking it, looked at its glow, and began to 
speak very deliberately. 

“ If only we had a home somewhere or other to go 
to, we might possibly return home . . .” 

“ That’s true,” said Hopeful, wagging his head. 

Jig-Leg looked askance at him, and continued : 

“ But as we haven’t got a home — we must go 
on.” 

“ Yes — we must,” groaned Hopeful. 

“ We’ve no place to go to, so there’s no sense talk- 
ing about it. And the chief cause of it is — we are 
fools ! And what fools we are too ! ” 

The dry voice of Jig- Leg cut through the air, and 
must have greatly disquieted Hopeful — for he flung 
himself prone on the ground, sighed, and gurgled 
oddly. 

“And I want something to eat — I’ve a frightful 
longing that way,” Jig-Leg concluded his drawling, 
reproachfully resonant speech. 

Then Hopeful rose to his feet with an air of 
decision. 

“ What’s the matter?” asked Jig-Leg. 

“ Let’s be off!” 

“ Why so lively all at once ? ” 

“ Let’s go ! ” 

“Come along, then,” and Jig-Leg also stood up, 
“ only there’s no sense in this . . .” 


CHUMS. 


279 


“ I don’t care what happens ! ” and Hopeful waved 
his hand. 

“ Plucked up your courage again, eh ? ” 

“What? Here you’ve been tormenting me and 
tormenting me, and blackguarding me and black- 
guarding me ... Oh Lord ! ” 

“ Then why do you mess about so ? ” 

“ Mess about ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Well, look you, I felt so sorry.” 

“ For whom ? For what ? ” 

“ For whom ? For that man, I suppose.” 

“ For that — man ? ” drawled Jig-Leg. “ Come now, 
take a pinch of snuff, and have done with it. Ah ! 
you’re a good soul, but you’ve no sense. What’s the 
man to you? Can I make you understand that? 
Why, he’d collar you, and smash you like a flea beneath 
his nail ! At the very time that you are pitying him 1 
Then you’ll go and declare your stupidity to him, 
and in return for your compassion, he’ll plague you 
with all the seven plagues. Why, you carry your 
very guts in your hand for people to look at, and drag 
your very vitals out into the light of day. Pity 
indeed ! — Ugh ! I’ve no patience with you. For 
Heaven’s sake, why don’t you have pity on yourself, 
instead of knocking yourself to bits? A pretty 
fellow you are ! Pity indeed ! — pooh ! ” 

Jig- Leg was quite outraged. 

His voice, cutting and full of irony and contempt 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


280 

for his comrade, resounded through the wood, and the 
branches of the shrubs shook with a gentle rustle, as if 
agreeing with the rough truth of his words. 

Hopeful, overwhelmed by these reproaches, paced 
along slowly on his trembling legs, drawing up his 
arms into the sleeves of his jacket, and drooping his 
head upon his breast. 

“ Wait ! ” said he at last. “ What matters it ? I’ll 
put it all right. When we come to the village, I will 
go into it — all alone. I’ll go — you need not come 
with me . . * I’ll prig the very first thing that 

falls within my reach — and so home ! Come along, 
and I’ll show you something ! It will be hard for me 
— but don’t say a word.” 

He spoke almost inaudibly, panting hard, with a 
rattling and a gurgling in his breast. Jig- Leg looked 
at him suspiciously, stopped short as if he were about 
to say something, waved his hand, and went on again 
without saying anything. 

For a long time they went on slowly and in 
silence. 

The cocks began to crow somewhere near, the dogs 
barked, presently the melancholy sound of the watch- 
bell was wafted to them from the distant village 
church, and was swallowed up in the sombre silence 
of the forest. A large bird, looking like a big black 
patch in the faint moonlight, rose into the air, and 
there was an ominous sound in the ravine of a flurried 
piping and the rustling of feathers. 


CHUMS. 


281 

“A crow — and a seed crow* b too, if I’m not mis- 
taken,” observed Jig-Leg. 

“ Look here ! ” said Hopeful, sinking heavily on the 
ground, “ go you, and I'll remain here ... I can 
do no more . . . I’m choking . . . and my 

head is going round.” 

“Well, there you are!” said Jig-Leg crossly. 
“ What, can’t you do a little more ? ” 

“ I can’t.” 

“ I congratulate you. Ugh ! ” 

“ I’ve not a bit of strength in me.” 

“ I’m not surprised, we’ve tramped without a meal 
since yesterday.” 

“No, it’s not that . . . it’s all up with me 

. . . look how the blood trickles ! ” 

And Hopeful raised his hand to Jig- Leg’s face, all 
bespattered with something dark. The other looked 
askance at it, and then, lowering his voice, asked : 

“ What’s to be done ? ” 

“You go on . . . I’ll remain here ... I 

may rest a bit.” 

“ Where shall I go ? Suppose I go to the village 
and say there’s a man in the forest taken bad ? ” 

“No . . . they’d kill me.” 

“If they get the chance.” 

Hopeful fell upon his back, coughed a hollow cough, 
and vomited a whole quantity of blood. 


A rook. 


282 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


“How goes it?” inquired Jig- Leg, standing over 
him, but looking the other way. 

“Very badly,” said Hopeful, in an almost inaudible 
voice, and fell a-coughing again. 

Jig- Leg cursed loudly and cynically. 

“ Suppose I call someone ? ” 

“Whom?” said Hopeful, his voice was like a 
dismal echo. 

“ Or perhaps you may now be able to get up and 
go on for a little while ? ” 

“ No, no! ” 

Jig- Leg sat by the head of his comrade, and 
embracing his own knees with his arms gazed 
steadily at Hopeful’s face. The breast of Hopeful 
was moving convulsively with a hollow rattling 
sound, his eyes were deep-sunken, his lips gaped 
strangely apart and seemed to cleave to his teeth. 
From the left corner of his mouth a dark living jet 
was trickling. 

“Is it still flowing ? ” asked Jig-Leg quietly, and in 
the tone of his question there was something very 
near to respect. 

The face of Hopeful shuddered. 

“ It is flowing,” came a faint rattle. 

Jig-Leg rested his head on his knees and was 
silent. 

Over them hung the wall of the ravine furrowed by 
the deep cavities of the spring streams. From its 
summit a shaggy row of trees illuminated by the 


CHUMS. 


283 

moon looked down into the abyss. The other side of 
the ravine, which had a gentler slope, was overgrown 
with shrubs ; here and there the grey stems of the 
aspens stood out against its darker masses, and on 
their naked branches the nests of the rooks were 
visible . . . And the ravine itself, lit up by the 
moon, was like a vision of slumber, like a weary 
dream, with nothing of the hues of life ; and the 
quiet gurgling of the stream magnified its lifelessness 
still more and overshadowed its melancholy silence. 

“ I am dying,” ^whispered Hopeful in a scarce 
audible voice, and immediately afterwards he repeated 
in a loud and clear voice, “ I am dying, Stephen ! ” 
Jig-Leg trembled all over, wriggled, snorted, and 
raising his head from his knees said, awkwardly, very 
gently, and as if fearing to disturb something : 

“ Oh, you’ve not come to that . . . don’t be 
afraid. Quite impossible! This is such a simple 
thing . . . why it’s nothing, my brother, God 

bless me ! ” 

“ Oh, Lord Jesus Christ ! ” sighed Hopeful heavily. 

“ It’s nothing at all ! ” whispered Jig-Leg, bending 
over his comrade’s face ; “just you keep quiet for a 
bit . . . maybe it will pass over ! ” 

But Hopeful began to cough, and a new sound 
was audible in his breast, just as if a wet clout was 
being smacked against his ribs. Jig-Leg looked at 
him and twirled his moustaches in silence. Having 
coughed himself out, Hopeful began to pant loudly 


284 


TALES FROM GORKY. 


and uninterruptedly — just as if he were running 
away somewhere with all his might For a long 
time he panted like this, then he said : 

“ Forgive me, Stephen ... if anything I 
. . . that horse you know . . . forgive me, 

little brother ! ” 

“ You forgive me ! ” interrupted Jig-Leg, and after 
a pause, he added : 

“ And I . . . whither shall I go ? And how 

will it be with me ? ” 

“ It doesn’t matter. May the Lord give 
thee ...” 

He sighed without finishing his sentence and was 
silent. 

Then he began to make a rattling sound . . . 

then he stretched out his legs — one of them he jerked 
sideways. 

Jig-Leg gazed at him without once removing his 
eyes. A few moments passed as long as hours. 

Suddenly Hopeful raised his head, but immediately 
it fell helplessly back on to the ground. 

“What, my brother?” said Jig-Leg, leaning over 
him. But he answered no more, but lay there quiet 
and motionless. 

The sour-visaged Jig-Leg remained sitting by his 
chum a few minutes longer, then he arose, took off 
his hat, crossed himself, and slowly went on his way 
along the ravine. His face was peaked, his eyebrows 
and moustaches were bristling, and he walked as 


CHUMS. 285 

firmly as if he wanted to beat the earth with his feet 
and do her a mischief. 

The day was already breaking. The sky was grey 
and cheerless ; a savage silence prevailed in the 
ravine; only the stream, disturbing no one, uttered 
its monotonous melancholy speech. 

But hark, there’s a rustle — maybe a clump of 
earth has rolled down the side of the ravine . . . 

The rook awakes, and, croaking uneasily, flies off 
elsewhere. Presently a titmouse utters her cry. In 
the damp cold air of the ravine sounds don’t live 
long — they arise and immediately vanish. 


The End. 


















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